This is perplexing because it is not a good text and its flaws are obvious. While it has been criticised from a few angles ever since it was published, usually from within a psychoanalytic frame-work (such as Joan Copjec, Gaylyn Studlar, Carol J. Clover, Richard Allen and Todd McGowan) or from philosophers like Noël Carroll, it is still treated as a serious and important work of film theory even though there is nothing in the text that can justify this. Mulvey herself has moved beyond it and has on occasions expressed her ambivalence about its canonical place within film studies. In 1989, in the introduction to the book Visual and Other Pleasures, she wrote this about her article: "Written in 1973, polemically and without regard for context and nuances of argument, published in 1975, after many references and quotations in the following year, it has acquired a balloon-like, free-floating quality." and that is one of several times she has commented on it in similar ways. Mulvey is more critical of her own article than many other scholars who believe it is a great piece of scholarly insight into how films and humans function. It is not, and it was never Mulvey's intention for it to be, so while I will be using expressions like "Mulvey says" or "Mulvey's argument" it is not to criticise her per se today, as she has moved beyond the article, but just the article when it was written. But let me go through it step by step, and point out what I consider are its major flaws.
***
Particularly important for Mulvey is Jacques Lacan and his "mirror stage" or "mirror phase". Lacan's belief (which he had taken from the psychologist Henri Wallon) is usually summarised something like this: children's perception of themselves as individuals is formed when, somewhere between the age of six and 18 months, they for the first time see themselves in the mirror, but that what they see is an idealised version of themselves. This is how Mulvey portrays it but when her article was published, Lacan had reconsidered the theory. It was not specifically a mirror that had to be involved and he was emphasising that it was not a decisive moment, not a formulation of an ego, but part of a process. So Mulvey's version of Lacan is not exactly right, or at least incomplete. This is perhaps understandable as Lacanians have argued for decades over the exact meaning of the mirror phase, and brief summaries of it are usually different from one another in some significant way. What she primarily takes from the idea of the mirror stage is the concept of identification with an ideal. She argues that when the audience see a film they identify with the male main character and see him as an idealised version of themselves. But her basic argument is a giant leap of faith. Lacan claims (according to her) that all children have a mirror experience and therefore, Mulvey claims, the members of the audience identify with the male lead and through his actions overcome their own castration anxiety. Even if Lacan's original theory had been correct though there is nothing similar between a mirror image of yourself and a film. As an example, the point of the mirror stage in Mulvey's telling is that the child does recognise the image as itself. This is not what we do when watching a film; we do not think "That is me." when we see the face of Tom Cruise on the screen as we do when we see the face of ourselves in the mirror. Further, there is no reason to assume that every audience member would react the same way. Mulvey's assumption that all audience members identify with the same character in a given film is one of the things that many have criticised her for.
Another obvious flaw is that the theory, although she speaks of Hollywood as a whole, only works when there is a male lead. Sometimes there is none, sometimes there are more than one. Do we identify with each lead equally much or subconsciously choose one, so some identify with Laurel and others with Hardy? In many thrillers the male lead is a criminal or murderer or in one way or another a bad character, and the female lead is a victim of his aggressions. The purpose of such films is for the audience to be scared and concerned for the health and well-being of the woman, but if we all identified with the man we would not be worried about the woman. If we, according to Mulvey's argument, identified with the man we would presumably hope that he (us) managed to kill the woman. But we do not. A small minority might, but not the average person.
milk glass in Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock 1941)
Another question is what in the first place it means to identify with a character and to what extent we do that. When I watch a James Bond film I do not identify with Bond, partly because we have nothing in common. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks 1940) is one of my favourite films but I do not identify with any of the characters there, and I would say that this is true for most films. When I identify with anything it is primarily with specific feelings or reactions in specific situations, regardless of the gender of the character (or even species, such as the terrified dog in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1949)). I do not think I am alone in this.
mirrors in The Little Foxes (William Wyler 1941)
Mulvey writes about Freudian ideas such as penis envy (according to Mulvey, women have a "desire to possess a penis"), castration complex and other related concepts, but those concepts are dubious at best, are impossible to prove, have been criticised ever since Freud first wrote about them and are rarely taken seriously today. Freud's theory, which Mulvey seems to agree with, was that these concepts were common to all humans at all times throughout history, even though Freud's empirical material consisted of a few people in fin de siècle Vienna and not a representative sample of humanity as a whole.
If invisible editing and the pretence of realism are inherently suspect you would expect neorealism and the films of Ken Loach to be among the main targets of apparatus theory rather than Hollywood at large, since a lot of Hollywood cinema is extravagant escapism and adventures which do not aim for realism. Two other popular kinds of films from the era Mulvey is primarily focused on are musicals and film noir and they frequently foreground stylistic achievements and artificiality. The idea that Hollywood films as a rule rely on invisible editing is also contradicted by the evidence. Some films try to keep the editing smooth and unnoticeable (even though almost any given film have cuts and edits that are highly visible) and others do not. Alfred Hitchcock, one of Mulvey's examples, is fond of shock editing and artificiality, although on a different level than Mulvey's other main example, Josef von Sternberg, whose films are all about form; the antithesis to the realism Mulvey claims is an essential part of the problem with Hollywood. This is an example of the incoherence of her arguments.
***
While Mulvey's article is theory-dense, she did not have to spend so much time on Freud and Lacan. Pointing out sexism in cinema is perfectly possible without invoking castration anxiety or a mirror stage. The sexism is real and obvious (just look at Bus Stop (Joshua Logan 1956)), and in need of no theory to highlight. Yet her arguments about the way men and women are depicted in films are weak too, whatever your views are of Freud and Lacan.
She makes several general statements about the differences between men and women on films, and key is how the man has the look and the woman is being looked at, how the man controls the gaze, and how the woman is always sexualised. She quotes Budd Boetticher saying that in herself, the woman has not meaning for the film, only as an instigator. This might be true for some of Boetticher's own films which are about a man avenging the death of his wife, but it is not a general truth for cinema at large. It never has been. Having women as central characters that drive the narrative has been a constant factor since the early days of cinema. That is what I meant when I said that The Nun's Story and Mulvey's article are incompatible. It is probably more common to have male characters as the ones driving the narrative, rather than women, but far from always. Screwball comedies usually have one man and one woman in the lead, equally driving the narrative. Musicals, such as Meet Me in St Louis (Vincente Minnelli 1944), often have women as leading characters, and the men play second fiddle. But it is not only specific genres. A crime thriller like Appointment with Danger (Lewis Allen 1951) has a nun and a postal inspector as the crime-fighting team. (Films with nuns as central characters should present a problem for Mulvey.) The films of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. The films of Doris Day, or Lucille Ball. But I will not go on any further, the list is long enough. You might counter that Mulvey is perhaps not talking about all of Hollywood cinema, that she is merely pointing at a certain kind of sexist cinema. But since she is using Lacan and apparatus theory, all-encompassing theories, and speaks of Hollywood cinema in singular, she does not leave any room for alternatives or minority cases. She is talking of the whole of Hollywood cinema "and of all the cinema which fell within its sphere of influence" by which she seems to mean "the narrative fiction film."
***
At one point Mulvey says that "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification." This is not true. Just think of singers such as Elvis Presley or Tom Jones. Cinema is filled with scenes of men looking at other men and women looking at men in a sexualised way. When male film stars were referred to as hunks and beefcakes, it was because they were objectified and the beauty of their bodies underlined. That is self-evident and Mulvey's apparently belief is belied by film history and audiences. I am sure that she was aware of women looking at William Holden or Burt Lancaster with lust in their eyes. Some genres were particularly good at providing eye candy for those who like to look at the male body, such as biblical epics and sword-and-sandals films. There is a delicious moment in Esther and the King (Raoul Walsh 1960), when Esther (played by Joan Collins) and some ladies come across the king, dressed only in little more than a loincloth, and they gasp with delight at the sight of his strong, sweaty body. But it is not genre-specific. In The More the Merrier (George Stevens 1944) Joel McCrea's character is a young and good-looking man in New York when most young and good-looking men are away overseas fighting the war, so the women stare at him and undress him with their eyes. In one scene he undresses himself and goes sunbathing in a pair of shorts. In Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen 1935), another romantic comedy, Fred MacMurray, the male lead, is half-naked most of the film unlike Carole Lombard, the female lead, who is properly dressed.
William Holden in Picnic (Joshua Logan 1955)
From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann 1953)
We can accept Mulvey's argument and settle for the idea that when the audience see Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach, all of them look at Kerr and nobody look at Lancaster. Or we can question whether this is plausible. I think it is not, and that her general arguments about men and women on films, and how they are viewed, are inaccurate. (There is also a Queer subtext in From Here to Eternity, which sometimes moves from subtext to text; yet another complication in Hollywood cinema that Mulvey cannot acknowledge.)
Burt Reynolds in Cosmopolitan, 1972
What about when she speaks of specific films? There too she is sometimes objectively wrong and sometimes interpret what is happening in a peculiar way. She mentions eight films by name in her article: Morocco (Josef von Sternberg 1930), Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg 1931), Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks 1939), To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks 1944), Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock 1954), The River of No Return (Otto Preminger 1954), Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock 1958) and Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock 1958). Of those she claims that in the two films by Hawks, the woman is initially a show girl, "isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised", but as the film progresses she becomes the property of the man and stops appearing in front of others. This is not what happens in the films. Bonnie in Only Angels Have Wings performs once, in the beginning, but this is a group performance with most of the main characters including the male lead, Geoff, and through this performance she is initiated into the group. She and Geoff become a couple (sort of) in the end of the film, but she does not change in appearance or become de-glamourized. She was never put on display or sexualised in the first place, and she never becomes his property. (An offensive idea.) But the most important thing is that in the film Bonnie is the audience's surrogate. She arrives at Barranca in the opening sequence, a stranger to this place where all the others know each other, and we follow her. The other characters spend the beginning of the film explaining to her (and us) who is who and what they do and why. If the audience identify with anyone in the film it is probably with her. Mulvey's argumentation has very little to do with what happens in the film.
Slim in To Have and Have Not does not change in appearance or character either during the film and it is after she has fallen in love with Steve that she starts to perform, so the opposite of what Mulvey claims. It is also more a case of her chasing him, being the active one and he more passive. This matters because if what Mulvey claims is happening in Hawks's two films is meant to prove her theory, such as it is, then it suggests that if the opposite happens it would disprove her theory, and it is the opposite that happens.
To Have and Have Not
About Rear Window, Mulvey says that Lisa has "an obsessive interest in dress and style," is "a passive image of visual perfection" and that she is saved in the end by Jeff. It is puzzling that she would call Lisa "a passive image" because she clearly is not. She is the most active character in the film, and supremely confident and driven. She works in fashion but is, among other things, organising photo sessions, doing fund-raising and having meetings. So neither professionally or privately can you reasonably describe Lisa is passive, and while it is possible that Jeff thinks her interest in dress and style is obsessive, there is no indication that Hitchcock, or the film, takes this view. According to Mulvey, it is when Jeff sees Lisa being threatened by another man that his desire for her is aroused. But this is getting things backwards. Jeff is dismissive of Lisa at first, when he considers her just as "a passive image of visual perfection" as Mulvey claims she is. But it is when he understands that she is intelligent, brave and resourceful that his love for her grows and takes charge of him. This is one of the major themes of the film, that Jeff is taught a lesson, he realises that he had the wrong idea of her. He is wrong about most women. He might have a male gaze but he has at first little understanding of what he sees.
Concerning Vertigo, Marnie and the Sternberg films, it is not entirely clear whether Mulvey's discussions of them strengthen or weaken her general argument. About von Sternberg's films she makes this observation: "the most important absence is that of the controlling male gaze" and this is confusing considering her article is primarily famous for its introduction of the concept of the male gaze and its ubiquitousness within Hollywood cinema. But in one of her two prime case studies it does not appear. Does she think that von Sternberg's films are the only exception to the rule, and should not this have been emphasised if they were?
What Mulvey says about Vertigo is not much more than a plot summary, so she is not uncovering something hidden beneath but only follows Hitchcock, who is upfront with what he is doing and what the film is about. Hitchcock might be said to make arguments that are similar to Mulvey's, which is perhaps why she is not criticising the film but merely describing it. She is not actually doing any kind of analysis. But she is calling James Stewart's character "a hero" and I do not think many would agree with her about that. Mulvey says about the end that "His curiosity wins through and she is punished." but that is incomplete. To call him "curious" is questionable and he too is punished. It would be a rare audience to come away from the film thinking that Stewart is a hero who has won. And here, like in Rear Window, he might have the gaze but he does not understand what he sees. In Rear Window he is also punished, but the woman, Lisa, is not. In the end it is she who gets what she wanted.
It is worth asking why, in an article which partly aims to expose the male gaze, Mulvey has chosen to focus on von Sternberg and Hitchcock of all filmmakers since within von Sternberg's films with Marlene Dietrich there is no such gaze while the Hitchcock's films she brings up are explicitly about that gaze, from a critical perspective. You do not need psychoanalytic theory to "discover" something that the characters are already explicitly discussing in the films. It is not even the subtext. It should be added that there is more than one woman in both Vertigo and Rear Window, but their presence go unacknowledged by Mulvey despite their importance for the films and their narratives. They too look. You could argue that the male gaze in these films is exposed by Hitchcock, shown to be incomplete and untrustworthy, and that it is women who see more clearly.
Stella and Jeff gazing in Rear Window
***
Does "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" have no value at all? It does, as an example of a historical moment in film theory. But that is all. Almost all her examples are muddled and frequently disprove her arguments. As a theory about films and about humans the article is too flawed, incoherent and factually wrong, to be of any use. The best way of looking at it is as a statement within the movement of which she was a part, cinephiles with an auteurist emphasis and with a connection with Edinburgh International Film Festival and the British Film Institute. This probably explains why her examples are not contemporary with the time of writing, but much older. The films she is talking about are the films that were particularly popular among her friends and associates, and her piece was aimed at that crowd, many of whom would, like Mulvey, be writing in Screen. It was not aimed to be on the mandatory reading lists for students across the world in 2019. I think treating it like something other than what it is, is doing a disservice to students and to Mulvey.
--------------------------------------------------------
A Ngram search on Google books for the frequency of the term "castration anxiety" results in a bell curve, which says something about how Mulvey's article really was of the moment.
Mulvey's article is sometimes called the first example of feminist film theory and criticism but it was not. Naomi Wise "The Hawksian Woman" (1971), Claire Johnston's "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema (1973) and Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape (1974) are three contemporary examples.
Some of the anthologies I referred to above:
Movies and Methods Volume II (1985), edited by Bill Nichols
Film and Theory: An Anthology (2000), edited by Robert Stam and Toby Miller
Film Theory and Criticism - Introductory Readings (2009, 7th Edition), edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (2011), edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, with Meta Mazaj
Some of the anthologies I referred to above:
Movies and Methods Volume II (1985), edited by Bill Nichols
Film and Theory: An Anthology (2000), edited by Robert Stam and Toby Miller
Film Theory and Criticism - Introductory Readings (2009, 7th Edition), edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (2011), edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, with Meta Mazaj
Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006)
