Study Task 3 | Triangulation Exercise, pt. 2

All three writers discuss subjects relating to gender and its depiction in narrative cinema, citing Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' as the main supporting evidence for their arguments.

In 'Stars' (1979), Dyer writes how narrative cinema and television are models for how we portray ourselves and our relationships, imitating those shown on-screen or by celebrities. Dyer's Star Theory suggests the idea that celebrities are constructed to represent real people experiencing real emotions. In the text, Dyer references Valerie Walkerdine's study of a London family viewing a video of Rocky III at home, linking 'the father's identification with Sylvester Stallone' to his 'role as a union representative at work' - aligning with how this father viewed himself as 'fighting for his family'.

The example of this study relates to John Storey's essay on 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture', suggesting that the male spectator/member of the audience 'fixes his gaze on the hero' in order to 'satisfy (his) ego formation' - fulfilling his very own internal hero narrative. Storey also agrees with much of Mulvey's 'Visual Pleasure' essay, perpetuating her idea that the pleasure of looking is divided between the roles of an 'active male' and 'passive female' - in which the 'moments of narrative' in film are intended for the male viewer, and the 'moments of spectacle' (where the woman is typically the spectacle in question...) are also intended for the male viewer, but instead to satisfy his libido.

In her argument, Mulvey weaves in aspects of psychoanalysis and Freudian theory to demonstrate how 'the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form' - which the two other writers also discuss, especially how cinema and television are marketed specifically towards an audience of men ('the moviegoer is positioned according to the pleasures of male heterosexual desire', Dyer 1979).
Mulvey states that cinema panders to a 'primordial wish for pleasurable looking', referncing how children go through a 'mirror phase' to support this claim. Mulvey's intention for her essay is to bring about the 'destruction of pleasure' through picking apart all of these ideas, saying that 'analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it'.