OUGD501 - Study task 01 - Triangulation exercise 

Visual and Other Pleasures 

Mulvey. L (2009 [1975]) Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke

Laura Mulvey is feminist film theorist but also a filmmaker who's work is influenced by Sigmund Freund's psychoanalysis. She's worked for the British Film Institute for many years and currently a professor at the University of London, but her most notable work is the essay 'Visual and Other Pleasures' which helped shift film theory in the 1970s towards psychoanalytical theory. 

Key notes from essay : 

• How culture reflects society and its structures 
• Women as an object
• Patriarchy, men in power within society 
• Scopophilia, the condition or act of gaining sexual pleasure from openly looking at sex organs or acts

Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

Storey, J (2006) Cultural theory and popular culture. Prentice hall, USA

Key notes from essay :

• Women are the object of male desire
• Male gaze
• Scopophilia
• Narcism 
• Two main moments of film, moments of narrative and moments of spectacle 

Heavenly bodies: Film stars and society

Dyer, R. and Department of Film Studies Richard Dyer (1986) Heavenly bodies: Film stars and society. 4th edn. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Richard Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in the Department of Film Studies at Kings college London. He specialises in cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender.

Key notes from essay :

• Mulveys freudian thinking leads her to conclude that the male gaze produces a sadistically  voyeuristic pleasure 
• Male characters are made threatening and aggressive to divert their erotic potential 
• Men in a scene have to be aggressive towards each other to not promote homosexuality

300 word summary triangulating the 3 texts 

Mulvey, Storey and Dyer all discuss the theory of psychoanalysis and gender roles within film in their  essays, the later two being mainly influenced by Mulvey's Visual and Other Pleasures which helped shift film theory in the 1970s towards psychoanalytical theory. Mulvey who is a feminist film theorist talks about numerous points, mainly bombarding the film industry with the first being women as an object in film. "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19). This point has also been in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture by John Storey, Mulvey stating "men look and women exhibit 'to-be-looked-at-ness' - both playing to and signifying male desire"  Mulvey expresses her personal views on this as its apparent she is unhappy with the way women are being sexualised in film but on the other hand Dyer's view is the opposite. Dyer who  specialises in cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender, discuses how the male body can also be displayed and objectified on film the same way as a woman is. He goes on to show an example from the film 'Picnic' in which a male actor is gazed at when topless on screen.