Cop Seminar 3 : Triangulation

In this seminar we evaluated and drew links between three texts - Storey, J : "Cultural theory and popular culture", Dyer, R : "Stars and audiences", Mulvey, L : "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema"

KEY POINTS

• L, Mulvey is the primary text. Her is a 'feminist' psychoanalysis' : psychoanalysis is a theory created by Freud, it intends to provides insight, by making making our unconcious thoughts conscious.   
• Main points: 
• Cinema is a mechanism by which to reinforce male hierachy
• Men are active and woman are passive.
• Women are objectified by the 'male gaze' 
• Cinema reinforces male ego - man is representative of all men, so they can project themselves onto the male role. 
• Female also represents the threat of castration - film solves this by either devaluaing women or uber objectifying them so that they cease to be a person. 
• The castration complex is the fear of emasculation. 
• Mulvey is a british, feminist film theorist. 
• R, Dyer - an academic specialising in cinema (particularly italian cinema), queer theory and the relationship between entertainment and represenations of race, sexuality and gender
• Massachistic view - role reversal, examples of women being unaffected by the male gaze. 
• J, Storey - wrote 'cultural theory and popular culture'. He is a professor and author. His article highlights key points of Mulvey's text, and by doing this makes it more accessible. 
• "The pleasure of popular cinema must be destroyed in order to liberate women from the exploitation and oppression of being the 'passive raw material from the male gaze"
• Relationship between writers - Dyers and storey are referential to Mulvey's texts. Her psychoanalysis of cinema forms the basis for their arguments, and they use this to develop their own. 
• Examples of male gaze within cinema e.g. Bond girls.