Mulvey And Butler Psychoanalysis

In 1991, Julie Dash directed an independent film classic, Daughters of the Dust, a narrative revolving around three generations of Geechee women preparing to migrate to the north, dealing with themes such as history preservation, tradition vs modernity, and black feminism perspective. Not only did Dash garner critical acclaim for being the first black female director to project a film for theatrical distribution, but also one of the few films to feature women of color as agents of change in the non-linear narrative, rather than excessive character additions. A recurring conflict in cinematic industry stems from how filmmakers construct men as protagonists and women as spectacle of objectification and source of erotic pleasure. Additionally, misrepresenting women to satisfy the male gaze establishes a problematic cinematic expectation on the roles normally fulfilled, constructing this unfair myth that psychologically and methodically reoccurs in the mindset of both male and female audience members, flawed by the illusion that the film represents truth. In her feminist film theory essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to criticize and scrutinize the fetishism, scopophilia, and eroticism in Hollywood mainstream cinema. What Daughters of the Dust executes impeccably roots from radically abandoning the cultural conventions that depict women as subservient and submissive to patriarchal

Shirley Chisholm uses logos to convince her audience that her argument is logical and reasonable. Logos, Greek for “a word” or “reason”, is the use of logical thought, fact, and rationality. Chisholm points out that “Working conditions and hours that are harmful to women are harmful to men; wages that are unfair for women are unfair for men” (Chisholm 3). Chisholm uses this fact to remind her audience that anything a man can do; anything a man can handle, a woman can handle. Sex does not even need to be a part of the equation: it all boils down to being human. A person’s gender does not have anything to do with their

Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain who is known for her essay on visual pleasures in narrative cinema. Being inspired by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan’s ideology combined with psychoanalysis, Mulvey comes up with the ‘Male Gaze Theory regarding sexual objectification on women in the media. The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and the literature portrays women and world from a masculine point of view presenting women as objects of male pleasure regardless of being heterosexual male or female, thus the formula of cinema becomes comprised of “women ad image, man as bearer of the look.” The male gaze consists of three different gazes: - look of the camera that records the film, - the look of the characters in the film and – the look of the audience that views the film. Mulvey then went on to classify women’s role on film functions “on two levels: as erotic objects for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic objects for the character within the auditorium.” She then criticise Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘the rear window’ made in 1954 for his portrayal

Both texts ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ were written during the second wave of feminism which centralised the issue of ownership over women’s sexuality and reproductive rights and as a result, the oral contraceptive was created. As powerfully stated by Ariel Levy, ‘If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire.’ Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter both celebrate female sexuality as empowering to challenge the constraints of social pressure on attitudes of women. Both writers aim to expose the impact of patriarchy as it represses female sexual desire and aim to control it thus challenge contemporary perspectives of women by revealing the oppression

Octavia Butler is an Afrofuturist, science fiction author who writes many dystopian stories that allude to questions about gender, social structures, and an individual’s ability to control her body and sexuality. When people think of speculative and science fiction they tend to think of nerdy white men writing stories about space and light sabers, but Octavia Butler challenges this stereotype herself by being one of the few African American women in this genre. In Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction short story “Speech Sounds” there is a reversal of gender roles and a strong idea of feminism that is portrayed through the main character Rye. There is also the use of simile and metaphor to help point out flaws in the social structure of the story and the world of the reader.

Judith Butler’s Gender Troubles emphasizes gender as the constant repetition of non-existent ideals to uphold a masculine-dominant culture. Likewise, “Body Politics” highlights this belief within the overtly feminine qualities of city women. As a whole, the poem contrasts idealized feminine “city women” with a “real woman” who possesses both feminine and masculine qualities. The mother figure challenges both the gender binary and the patriarchal order by rejecting the feminine gender norms of the society. This feminist reading of the poem makes many valuable and probable claims, however the feminist approach contains some weaknesses. This becomes evident in a lack of information about the type of society, and the reader therefore lacks a complete understanding of how the women are oppressed. As a whole, this poem sets forth the idea that female gender is fluid, and asks its readers to questions what it means to be a woman in a male dominant

Gail Bederman, author of “Manliness and Civilization” published in 1995, explains how manliness is associated with race and civilization. She states that historians explain manhood as a normal aspect of human nature and although it may be expressed differently at different times, the meaning of it always remains the same. Bederman indicates her thesis, “ This book will investigate this turn-of-the-century connection between manhood and race. It will argue that, between 1890 and 1917, as white middle-class men actively worked to reinforce male power, their race became a factor which was crucial to their gender.”(p. 4) The author uses a group of a people with different cultural assumptions about race, manhood, and civilization to explain her

Choose one or two examples of media texts and explore how they might challenge or disrupt Mulvey’s concept of ‘the male gaze’.

The media has long been recognized as important source of gender related information, television and cinema specifically influences its audience in a considerable way. (Denmark and Paludi 2008). With regards to the concept of gender cinema can offer a space where ambiguities of identities are played out; understanding the play of the categories of femininity and masculinity is very important in evaluating our own understandings of gender and how we react to different representations of it (Tasker 2002).If a film can show different individuals and we can recognize how social forces shape and constrain the individual according to classifications of gender it narrates an experience where we experience the film as gendered viewers. Film reflects and generates out own experience of gender over and above out own recognition and observation of it. (Pomerance 2001). Gender itself is a very complex concept to understand and portray onscreen, the concept of gender performativity was introduced by Judith butler in her book Gender Trouble: Gender Performance and Performativity.

society. I will do this by first talking about the theoretical framework of Moya Lloyd’s article called “Performativity, Parody and Politics” and talk about what gender is all about, then I will move on to Susie Orbach theory and talk about the messages she has written in her books on how we are bombarded by the Westren ideals and how this affects the appearance of the black female body. Finally I will discuss two current examples in the media on how black female body is looked upon.

I address this to you for selfish reasons. In each one of you I envision myself, and by recognizing your existence, I am legitimizing my own. Something I was in desperate need of over this course, as I am sure you will be too. This is not an easy burden to admit, nor is it one that is easily dealt with. Don 't be fooled by the scatters of Audre Lorde and the seemingly intersectional works you notice in the beginning, as I made the mistake of doing. If this course was a means by which to empower us, I would not be able to count the number of individuals who share our history, our culture and our beautifully melanated exteriors on a single hand. So it is with a heavily lifted heart that I write this too you.

The collection of short stories “Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost: three versions of one story” has been taken from the book American Ghosts and Old World Wonders written by the Canadian feminist writer Angela Carter in 1987. Carter, known for her use of irony when writing her feminist stories so as to criticise the patriarchal society, confessed some years ago her interest in rewriting fairytales “I don’t mind being called a spell-binder. Telling stories is a perfectly honourable thing to do ... I do find imagery of fairytales very seductive and capable of innumerable interpretations” (Haffenden, 1985: 82). By making this statement, the writer clarifies her interest in retelling old fairytales using their plot to create a new story.

Through the centuries, the image and the role of female have been observed and studied in various ways, and the acquired knowledge has been recorded in literature, works of art, religious texts, mythology and codes of social behaviour. Female appear in the stories of men, but only in roles defined by men.

But Mulvey proved impotent how women can get out of this suffering. She wonders “how to fight the unconscious/ structured like a language, [...] while still caught within the language of patriarchy?” (Mulvey 484). Indeed, in the article The Ideological Impediment: Feminism and Film Theory, Jennifer Hammett said that women “constituted as subjects by patriarchal representations, women do not have the epistemological resources necessary to escape patriarchy” (Hammett 86). In fact, Mulvey does understand that psychoanalysis is "an important political weapon,” but this weapon often in the hands of men. In his essay The signification of the Phallus, Lacan tried to point out the difference between “to have” and “to be” the signifier, the phallus (Lacan 1309). He stated that

Introduction Sigmund Freud is the great theorist of the mysteries of the human mind and a founder of the psychoanalysis theory which was formed in the 1800s, the theory is well known for accessing self-identity and the self in different ways in order to discover their different meaning, (Elliott, 2015). Buss (2008) states that Sigmund’s theory of Psychoanalysis offers a unique controversial insight into how the human mind works in a way that, this theory provided a new approach to psychotherapy, thus it means that it provided a new treatment for psychological problems that even highly qualified doctors couldn’t even cure. (Buss, 2008) According to Cloninger (2013), Erik Erikson on the other hand is the founder of the psychoanalytic-social Perspective which is mostly referred to as psychosocial development theory, Erikson became interested in child development when he met Anna Freud and he trained in psychoanalysis and with his Montessori diploma, he become one of the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. His theory describes eight stages of development that occurs in sequence throughout life and unlike Sigmund Freud’s theory, Erickson’s theory is more comprehensive because it encompasses cultural phenomena and mostly applied to therapy with Children and adolescence. (Cloninger, 2013) This essay explores Freud theory of Psychoanalysis and Erikson Psychosocial theory, analyzing, comparing and contrasting the two theories looking at the basic tenets and assumptions