Laura Mulveys Citizen Kane A Feminist Film Perspective

Renowned feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, explores how classic Hollywood cinema is shown through a masculine perspective that fetishisizes women as objects of desire. This perspective is also known as the â€Å"male gaze†, which creates a voyeuristic and scopophilic layer to the viewing of film. According to Mulvey, â€Å"in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.† One of the staples of classic Hollywood cinema is women consistently being put or made into a visually erotic role for both the male characters on screen, and the audience. This staple is of course found in the†¦show more content†¦While it is more than fair to say that women in classic Hollywood cinema are automatically associated with â€Å"to-be-looked-at-ness†, the question that then arises, since Mulvey chose to use à ¢â‚¬Å"connote†, is what the consequence is which the â€Å"to-be-looked-at-ness† is coming from. If the consequence is the simple fact that they are women, then by that logic, a woman’s mere existence causes her own fetishization. Except that considering in the case of cinema and film it is a visual fetish, it does not make sense to say a woman being a woman is the source of her own fetishization since she is not watching or looking at herself. Rather, the looking is done onto her. In regards to connote’s second definition, women are not communicating or conveying â€Å"to-be-looked-at-ness† because that would imply they had a choice to indicate something else. The interaction between a woman and the camera is extremely one-sided. The camera watches the woman, and this watching is then transferred to the audience when they view the film on a screen. Again, the the act of looking is being done onto the woman. It seems to me, that women in classic Hol lywood cinema do not â€Å"connote to-be-looked-at-ness†, as Mulvey claims, but are instead subjugated to â€Å"to-be-looked-at-ness† by the male perspective responsible for the looking. This male perspective is prominent in a