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Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of
film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
and
media studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly ...
at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught at Bulmershe College, the
London College of Printing The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It specialises in media-related subjects including advertising, animation, film, graphic design, photography and sound arts. It has approximately ...
, the
University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...
, and the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
. During the 2008–09 academic year, Mulvey was the Mary Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at
Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
. Mulvey has been awarded three
honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
s: in 2006 a
Doctor of Letters Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Docto ...
from the
University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...
; in 2009 a
Doctor of Law A Doctor of Law is a degree in law. The application of the term varies from country to country and includes degrees such as the Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D. or S.J.D), Juris Doctor (J.D.), Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), and Legum Doctor (LL ...
from
Concordia University Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...
; and in 2012 a
Bloomsday Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere on 16 June, the day his 1922 novel '' Ulysses'' takes place in 1904, the date of his first sexual encounter with his ...
Doctor of Literature Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Docto ...
from
University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ...
.


Film theory

Mulvey is best known for her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal ''
Screen Screen or Screens may refer to: Arts * Screen printing (also called ''silkscreening''), a method of printing * Big screen, a nickname associated with the motion picture industry * Split screen (filmmaking), a film composition paradigm in which mul ...
''. It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled ''Visual and Other Pleasures'', as well as in numerous other anthologies. Her article, which was influenced by the theories of
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
and Jacques Lacan, is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework. According to film scholar
Robert Kolker Robert Kolker is an American journalist who worked as a contributing editor at ''New York Magazine'' and a former projects and investigations reporter for Bloomberg News and ''Bloomberg Businessweek''. He is the author of ''Lost Girls'', a ''Ne ...
, it "remains a touchstone not only for
film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. ...
, but for
art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
and
literary analysis Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. T ...
as well". Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as
Jean-Louis Baudry Jean-Louis Baudry (March 2, 1930 – October 3, 2015) was a French novelist, '' Tel Quel'' literary editor, and psychoanalytic film theorist. He is best known for "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus" (1970) and "The Appara ...
and Christian Metz used
psychoanalytic PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...
ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema. Mulvey's contribution, however, inaugurated the intersection of film theory,
psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
and
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" helped to bring the term "
male gaze In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heteros ...
" into film criticism and eventually into common parlance. It was first used by the English art critic
John Berger John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...
in his seminal ''
Ways of Seeing ''Ways of Seeing'' is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name. The series was intended as a ...
'', a series of films for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
aired in January 1972, and later a book, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. Mulvey states that she intends to use Freud and Lacan's concepts as a "political weapon". She employs some of their concepts to argue that the cinematic apparatus of
classical Hollywood cinema Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s (rapidly after World War I) and the 1960s. It eventually b ...
inevitably put the spectator in a masculine subject position, with the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire and "the male gaze". In the era of classical Hollywood cinema, viewers were encouraged to identify with the protagonists, who were and still are overwhelmingly male. Meanwhile, Hollywood women characters of the 1950s and 1960s were, according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness" while the camera positioning and the male viewer constituted the "bearer of the look". Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" (i.e., seeing woman as image "to be looked at") and "fetishistic" (i.e., seeing woman as a substitute for "the lack", the underlying psychoanalytic fear of
castration Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharma ...
). To account for the fascination of Hollywood cinema, Mulvey employs the concept of ''scopophilia''. This concept was first introduced by
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
in ''
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (german: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie), sometimes titled ''Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex'', is a 1905 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advance ...
'' (1905) and it refers to the pleasure gained from looking as well as to the pleasure gained from being looked at, two fundamental human drives in Freud’s view. Sexual in origin, the concept of scopophilia has voyeuristic, exhibitionistic and narcissistic overtones and it is what keeps the male audience’s attention on the screen. According to Anneke Smelik, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at
Radboud University Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...
, classic cinema encourages the deep desire to look through the incorporation of structures of voyeurism and narcissism into the narrative and image of the film. As regards the narcissistic overtone of scopophilia, narcissistic visual pleasure can arise from self-identification with the image. In Mulvey’s view, male spectators project their look, and thus themselves, onto the male protagonists. In this manner, male spectators come to indirectly possess the woman on screen as well. Furthermore, Mulvey explores the concept of scopophilia in relation to two axes: one of activity and one of passivity. This “binary opposition is gendered.” The male characters are seen as active and powerful: they are endowed with agentivity and the narrative unfolds around them. On the other hand, females are presented as passive and powerless: they are objects of desire that exist solely for male pleasure, and thus females are placed in an exhibitionist role. This perspective is further perpetuated in ''unconscious patriarchal society''. Furthermore, as regards the fetishistic mode of the male gaze as suggested by Mulvey, this is one way in which the threat of castration is solved. According to Mulvey, the paradox of the image of ‘woman’ is that although they stand for attraction and seduction, they also stand for the lack of the phallus, which results in ''castration anxiety''. As previously stated, the fear of castration is solved through fetishism, but also through the narrative structure. To alleviate said fear on the level of narrative, the female character must be found guilty. To exemplify this kind of narrative plot, Mulvey analyzes the works of
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
and Josef von Sternberg, such as ''Vertigo'' (1958) and ''Morocco'' (1930), respectively. This tension is resolved through the death of the female character (as in Vertigo, 1958) or through her marriage with the male protagonist (as in Hitchcock’s ''Marnie'', 1964). Through fetishization of the female form, attention to the female “lack” is diverted, and thus, renders women a safe object of pure beauty, not a threatening object. Mulvey also explores Jacques Lacan’s concepts of ''ego formation'' and ''the mirror stage''. In Lacan’s view, children gain pleasure through the identification with a perfect image reflected in the mirror, which shapes children’s ego ideal.Lacan, J. (1953) Some reflections on the ego. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 11–17. For Mulvey, this notion is analogous to the manner in which the spectator obtains narcissistic pleasure from the identification with a human figure on the screen, that of the male characters. Both identifications are based on Lacan’s concept of ''méconnaissance'' (misrecognition), which means that such identifications are “blinded by narcissistic forces that structure them rather than being acknowledged.” Different filming techniques are at the service of making voyeurism into an essentially male prerogative, that is, voyeuristic pleasure is exclusively male. As regards camera work, the camera films from the optical as well as libidinal point of view of the male character, contributing to the spectator’s identification with the male look. Furthermore, Mulvey argues that cinematic identifications are gendered, structured along sexual difference. The representation of powerful male characters is opposite to the representation of powerless female characters. Hence, the spectator readily identifies with the male characters. The representation of powerless female characters can be achieved through camera angle. The camera films women from above, at a high camera angle, thus portraying women as defenseless. Camera movement, editing and lighting are used in this respect as well. A case in point here is the film ''The Silence of the Lambs'' (1990). Here, it is possible to appreciate the portrayal of the female protagonist, Clarice Starling (
Jodie Foster Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the ho ...
), as an object of stare. In the opening sequence, the elevator scene shows Clarice surrounded by several tall FBI agents, all dressed identically, all towering above her, “all subjecting her to their (male) gaze.” Mulvey argues that the only way to annihilate the patriarchal Hollywood system is to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. She calls for a new feminist avant-garde filmmaking that would rupture the narrative pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking. She writes, "It is said that analyzing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. That is the intention of this article." "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was the subject of much interdisciplinary discussion among film theorists, which continued into the mid-1980s. Critics of the article pointed out that Mulvey's argument implies the impossibility of the enjoyment of classical Hollywood cinema by women, and that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorship not organized along normative gender lines. Mulvey addresses these issues in her later (1981) article, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by
King Vidor King Wallis Vidor (; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, ...
's '' Duel in the Sun'' (1946)," in which she argues a metaphoric '
transvestism Transvestism is the practice of dressing in a manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex. In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional, or ceremonial reasons. The term is considered outdated in Western ...
' in which a female viewer might oscillate between a male-coded and a female-coded analytic viewing position. These ideas led to theories of how gay, lesbian, and bisexual spectatorship might also be negotiated. Her article was written before the findings of the later wave of media audience studies on the complex nature of fan cultures and their interaction with stars. Queer theory, such as that developed by
Richard Dyer Richard Dyer (born 1945) is an English academic who held a professorship in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London. Specialising in cinema (particularly Italian cinema), queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment ...
, has grounded its work in Mulvey to explore the complex projections that many gay men and women fix onto certain female stars (e.g., Doris Day,
Liza Minnelli Liza May Minnelli ( ; born March 12, 1946) is an American actress, singer, dancer, and choreographer. Known for her commanding stage presence and powerful alto singing voice, Minnelli is among a rare group of performers awarded an Emmy, Grammy ...
,
Greta Garbo Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragedy, ...
,
Marlene Dietrich Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
,
Judy Garland Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in '' The ...
). Another point of criticism over Mulvey’s essay is the presence of
essentialism Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...
in her work; that is, the idea that the female body has a set of attributes that are necessary to its
identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
and function and that is essentially other to masculinity. Then, the question of sexual identity suggests opposed ontological categories based on a biological experience of genital sex. As a result, affirming that there is an essence to being a woman contradicts the idea that being a woman is a construction of the patriarchal system. Regarding Mulvey’s view of the identity of the gaze, some authors questioned “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” on the matter of whether the gaze is really always male. Mulvey does not acknowledge a protagonist and a spectator other than a heterosexual male, failing to consider a woman or homosexual as the gaze. Other critics pointed out that there is an oversimplification of gender relations in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. According to them, Mulvey’s essay shows a binary and categorical division of genders into male and female. This view does not acknowledge theoretical postulates put forward by LGBTQ+ theorists -and the mutant community itself- that understand gender as something flexible. Additionally, Mulvey is criticized for not acknowledging other than white spectators.hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press. From this viewpoint, by not recognizing racial differences, when Mulvey refers to “women”, she is only speaking about white women. For some authors, Mulvey does not consider the black female spectators who choose not to identify with white womanhood and who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession. Thus, Mulvey fails to consider that these women create a critical space outside of the active/male passive/female dichotomy. Feminist critic Gaylyn Studlar wrote extensively to problematize Mulvey's central thesis that the spectator is male and derives visual pleasure from a dominant and controlling perspective. Studlar suggested rather that visual pleasure for all audiences is derived from a passive, masochistic perspective, where the audience seeks to be powerless and overwhelmed by the cinematic image. Mulvey later wrote that her article was meant to be a provocation or a manifesto, rather than a reasoned academic article that took all objections into account. She addressed many of her critics, and clarified many of her points, in "Afterthoughts" (which also appears in the ''Visual and Other Pleasures'' collection). Mulvey's most recent book is titled ''Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image'' (2006). In this work, Mulvey responds to the ways in which video and DVD technologies have altered the relationship between film and viewer. No longer are audience members forced to watch a film in its entirety in a linear fashion from beginning to ending. Instead, viewers today exhibit much more control over the films they consume. In the preface to her book, therefore, Mulvey begins by explicating the changes that film has undergone between the 1970s and the 2000s. Whereas Mulvey notes that, when she first began writing about films, she had been "preoccupied by Hollywood's ability to construct the female star as ultimate spectacle, the emblem and guarantee of its fascination and power," she is now "more interested in the way that those moments of spectacle were also moments of narrative halt, hinting at the stillness of the single celluloid frame." With the evolution of film-viewing technologies, Mulvey redefines the relationship between viewer and film. Before the emergence of VHS and DVD players, spectators could only gaze; they could not possess the cinema's "precious moments, images and, most particularly, its idols," and so, "in response to this problem, the film industry produced, from the very earliest moments of fandom, a panoply of still images that could supplement the movie itself," which were "designed to give the film fan the illusion of possession, making a bridge between the irretrievable spectacle and the individual's imagination." These stills, larger reproductions of
celluloid Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...
still-frames from the original reels of movies, became the basis for Mulvey's assertion that even the linear experience of a cinematic viewing has always exhibited a modicum of stillness. Thus, until a fan could adequately control a film to fulfill his or her own viewing desires, Mulvey notes that "the desire to possess and hold the elusive image led to repeated viewing, a return to the cinema to watch the same film over and over again." However, with digital technology, spectators can now pause films at any given moment, replay their favourite scenes, and even skip the scenes they do not desire to watch. According to Mulvey, this power has led to the emergence of her "possessive spectator." Films, then, can now be "delayed and thus fragmented from linear narrative into favorite moments or scenes" in which "the spectator finds a heightened relation to the human body, particularly that of the star." It is within the confines of this redefined relationship that Mulvey asserts that spectators can now engage in a sexual form of possession of the bodies they see on screen. Mulvey believes that
avant-garde film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
"poses certain questions which consciously confront traditional practice, often with a political motivation" that work towards changing "modes of representation" as well as "expectations in consumption." Mulvey has stated that feminists recognise modernist avant-garde "as relevant to their own struggle to develop a radical approach to art."


Phallocentrism and patriarchy

Mulvey incorporates the Freudian idea of
phallocentrism Phallocentrism is the ideology that the phallus, or male sexual organ, is the central element in the organization of the social world. Phallocentrism has been analyzed in literary criticism, psychoanalysis and psychology, linguistics, medicine and ...
into "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Using Freud's thoughts, Mulvey insists on the idea that the images, characters, plots and stories, and dialogues in films are inadvertently built on the ideals of patriarchies, both within and beyond sexual contexts. She also incorporates the works of thinkers including Jacques Lacan and meditates on the works of directors Josef von Sternberg and
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
. Within her essay, Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur while viewing a film. Viewing a film involves unconsciously or semi-consciously engaging the typical societal roles of men and women. The "three different looks", as they are referred to, explain just exactly how films are viewed in relation to phallocentrism. The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. The second "look" describes the nearly
voyeuristic Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". A ...
act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Lastly, the third "look" refers to the characters that interact with one another throughout the film. The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact". The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly effects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of
sexual objectification Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is mo ...
" that he cannot.


As a filmmaker

Mulvey was prominent as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s. With
Peter Wollen Peter Wollen (29 June 1938 – 17 December 2019) was a film theorist and filmmaker. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's ''Signs and Meaning in the Cinema'' (1969) helped to transfo ...
, her husband, she co-wrote and co-directed ''Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons'' (1974), '' Riddles of the Sphinx'' (1977 – perhaps their most influential film), ''AMY!'' (1980), ''Crystal Gazing'' (1982), ''Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti'' (1982), and ''The Bad Sister'' (1982). ''Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons'' was the first of Mulvey and Wollen's films. In this film, Mulvey attempted to link her own feminist writings on the Amazon myth with the paintings of
Allen Jones Allen Jones may refer to: *Allen Jones (Continental Congress) (1739–1798), Continental Congress delegate *Allen Jones (artist) (born 1937), British pop artist *Allen Jones (record producer) (1940–1987), American record producer * A.J. Styles (A ...
. These writings concerned themes such as male fantasy, symbolic language, women in relation to men and the patriarchal myth. Both filmmakers were interested in exploring ideology as well as the "structure of mythologizing, its position in mainstream culture and notions of modernism." With '' Riddles of the Sphinx,'' Mulvey and Wollen connected "modernist forms" with a narrative that explored feminism and psychoanalytical theory. This film was fundamental in presenting film as a space "in which the female experience could be expressed." ''AMY!'' was a film tribute to Amy Johnson and explores the previous themes of Mulvey and Wollen's past films. One of the main themes of the film is that women "struggling towards achievement in the public sphere" must transition between the male and female worlds. ''Crystal Gazing'' exemplified more spontaneous filmmaking than their past films. Many of the elements of the film were decided once production began. The film was well received but lacked a "feminist underpinning" that had been the core of many of their past films. The last films of Mulvey and Wollen as a team, ''Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti'' and ''The Bad Sister'' revisited feminist issues previously explored by the filmmakers. In 1991, Mulvey returned to filmmaking with ''Disgraced Monuments'', which she co-directed with Mark Lewis. This film examines "the fate of revolutionary monuments in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism."


See also

*
Gaze In critical theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, the gaze (French ''le regard''), in the philosophical and figurative sense, is an individual's (or a group's) awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. The concept ...
* The female gaze *
Scopophilia In psychology and psychiatry, scopophilia or scoptophilia ( grc, σκοπέω , "look to", "to examine" + , "the tendency towards") is an aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or a person. In human sexuality, the term scoptophilia des ...
*
Experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
*
Feminist film theory Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by Second Wave Feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years ...


References


Further reading

* * * * * * * *


External links

* * * Laura teaches on th
Film, Television and Screen Media MA at Birkbeck, University of LondonLaura Mulvey
interviewed by Emma Smart, British Entertainment History Project, 27 November 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mulvey, Laura 1941 births Living people British experimental filmmakers Critical theorists Feminist studies scholars Film theorists Place of birth missing (living people) Gender studies academics Academics of Birkbeck, University of London People educated at St Paul's Girls' School Postmodern feminists British feminists Poststructuralists Women art historians Women experimental filmmakers