Looking at the opening scene of Rear Window, I found it to be incredibly in line with Mulvey’s claims from her discussion of “Feminism and Visual Pleasure”, especially regarding the “masculine spectator, the subject, and what we might call a feminine spectated, the object”(Parker 173). In the film, the male main character, played by actor James Stewart, is viewing the world around him through the literal frame of his window, but taking it one step further in line with what Mulvey might suggest, also the frame of a male heterosexual gaze. The objects of his gaze are his neighbors, but primarily in this opening scene, the young ballerina. Connecting to Mulvey’s discussion of the female as the spectator’s object, we are viewing the woman in, again, a very framed setting, her apartment window. I felt this might play into her claim to the “abusive version of masculine heterosexuality” as she has no agency in the view of the audience except for how Stewart is gazing at her; she is doing things we cannot hear, there is no dialogue that we can witness besides what is showed to us by Stewart. 

Similarly, in the opening scene of Psycho, the usage of the window brings in elements of an invasion of privacy and some gaze we cannot yet identify. To point to the visual perspectives of this scene that align with Mulvey, I found the first shot of the two characters very telling and connected to the abusive heterosexual gaze. When we see the male character standing and moving beside the bed where the female lead is stationary, her sole purpose in this scene is to be observed. Additionally, throughout the scene, he moves back and forth from the window to around the room while Leigh stays stationary as their discussions occur. I did find that perhaps this scene could be elaborated on by later assertions of Mulvey that highlight the increasingly critical nature of watching these films and how “actresses who characters often look at men as the men look at them”(Parker 183) can be viewed not in an inherently masculine nature but as an equal agent in the gazing. 

QCQ on video “Visual Pleasure at 40” from Mulvey

Quote: …found that I was detached from the screen, detached from the story and that blissful sense of loss of self into the world if the cinema, and suddenly became a woman looking at films which I’d loved and now began to irritate me”(Mulvey 15:21)

Comment: This passage from the video “Visual Pleasure at 40,” where Mulvey re-examines her early work, really stuck out to me as I think of my own experiences with films I used to like, and then suddenly, one day, I would think of all these questions and complaints about the female characters I hadn’t before. I think this ties into the latter part of Parker’s discussion of Mulvey when it stated how “…popular film may not be pervasively demeaning to women as it used to be, it is hardly a paragon of feminist equality”(183); as more voices and critical approaches are applied to film, we can get out of this passive acceptance of whatever gaze or focalization curs and insert our views and judgments. I also felt this connected with a later quote from the video where Mulvey explained that there was a shift from woman’s spectacle being naturalized into popular culture to the patriarchal psyche that is the very construction of that spectacle. 

Question: After hearing how Mulvey explained the many phases her work went through, such as the political catalyst of the women’s rights movement to then the academic context and how she feels it resembles a historical document, I wonder if she feels that films themselves can be perceived through a historical lens that identifies a specific period; bringing in her point that Hollywood did have its own specificity around the female objectiveness and the way that gaze was modified and absorbed (19:00ish). I also wonder how we can connect newer methodologies like the Bechdel test to her theories. Would it seem like the culture itself is still steeped in this patriarchal lens, and they insert certain criteria to appease growing complaints and keep critics quiet? It would be interesting to pick out contemporary examples where women direct films and stars leading women and compare the effects of gazing.