Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) attempts to identify the patriarchal structure that Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo is built upon. The display of elements such as scopophilia and gender performance contribute to the plot in various ways. Although men are portrayed as the active agents in these movies, it is the women’s passivity that serves as their motivation. While masculinity and femininity each play a specific role in contributing to the plot, they also become ascribed with respective characteristics in film. Scottie and Madeline both serve as characters that expose how reality can be altered specific to gender, and also how their respective mental states are treated within the context of the film. Hitchcock’s works provide the audience with a framework that differs from reality as we experience a male character viewing a desirable other free from any fear of judgement. This creates a sense of engagement with audience members as the role they are asked to take on liberates them from any judgments that would follow from indulging in scopophilia, and also allows for them to identify with certain characters. Through the use of the active male and passive female characters in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), the display of masculine scopophilia and the fragmentation of respective gendered mental states provide an outline for not only a representation of how masculinity and femininity work in relation to rationality, but also an appropriate and safe context for audience members to engage in scopic activities themselves. This sense of identification in the film between the viewer and character frees the viewer from the external pressures of society that would otherwise prevent them from engaging in the gaze, however it also conditions an unconscious participation in the patriarchal structure that the film critiques.

Mulvey argues in her essay that men serve to drive the plot of films forward while women are presented as the object of desire for men. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, this can be seen in Scottie’s pursuit and investigation of Madeline throughout the city. As he unravels the details of Madeline’s suspicious behaviour in the process of discovering the trap that has been set for him by Gavin Elster, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Madeline. Scottie’s desire for Madeline results in the suspension of the advancement of the plot. The scenes in which he follows Madeline from the florist to the art museum take up a significant amount of time in relation to the film, and they contain little action and dialogue. Although these scenes slow the progression of the plot, they serve to project Madeline as Scottie’s motivation and object of desire. This becomes a reflection of Mulvey’s argument that “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female” (Mulvey). This also becomes an implication that masculinity is associated with an inability to control voyeuristic impulses while presenting femininity as a lustful distraction.