Research on Laura Mulvey, Jessica Rabbit and Harley Quinn

How is Laura Mulvey's theory of pleasure and narrative cinema composed in texts aimed at younger audiences like in 'Who framed Roger Rabbit' 1988 compared to texts aimed at mature audiences like in 'Suicide Squad' 2016

Jessica Rabbit from 'Who framed Roger Rabbit' 

·     https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/who-framed-roger-rabbit-30th-anniversary-jessica-feminism-appeal-a8411501.html - 

·     Thanks to those fantastical proportions, she’s both a legitimate sex symbol and the parody of one; an animated cartoon character who’s been lusted over and fetishised to the maximum. - 

·     She’s the pure product of the male gaze, in many ways, since her creators – animator Richard Williams and director Robert Zemeckis – have openly described her as the “ultimate male fantasy” 

·     doesn’t deserve to be written off entirely as two-dimensional fantasy, especially when her presence within the long cinematic history of the femme fatale has such value.

·     femme fatale acting as an outlet to those fears by directly equating sex with danger

·     “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” A line that exemplifies her own appeal beyond straight objectification

·     Jessica Rabbit may not be much of a femme fatale at heart, as we come to learn, but she’s certainly a woman who understands its power: to shun traditional femininity gets you marked as a danger, but it can also gain you control over those interested only in controlling you. 

·     https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/22/who-framed-roger-rabbit-at-30-the-game-changer-hollywood-couldnt-top- flashing as much scarlet-draped thigh and sideboob as can possibly be squeezed under a PG certificate

·     jessica Rabbit swiftly overtook Betty Boop as the ne plus ultra of animated sex symbols

·     http://whatculture.com/film/15-traumatising-moments-childrens-movies-scarred-life?page=9bit challenging for kids to watch and 'get'. There's the sexualisation of a cartoon rabbit

·     https://www.eadt.co.uk/what-s-on/great-movie-who-framed-roger-rabbit-is-really-film-noir-1-5585310 - that ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit isn’t actually aimed at kids at all, …the story is very dark, pure 1940s film noir’ 

·     https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GKE2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=characteristics+of+the+femme+fatale&source=bl&ots=kxh42ityAE&sig=aQ9Hh-UObTP0LyaGWr5Hnd2DNPk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMkObqru3fAhUL2SwKHeC6BpU4FBDoATANegQIAxAB#v=onepage&q=characteristics%20of%20the%20femme%20fatale&f=false

·     https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/03/192343/femme-fatales-in-movies - a few important traits: A sultry voice, voluptuousness, sex appeal.

·     https://medium.com/@HaubrichNoir/on-the-femme-fatale-where-did-she-come-from-where-is-she-going-1fe271defd2d - hypnotizes with her lethal beauty.

·     https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/22/who-framed-roger-rabbit-at-30-the-game-changer-hollywood-couldnt-top

·     https://www.cbr.com/jessica-rabbit-secrets/
https://stream.org/lets-honest-disney-sexualizing-characters-long-time/

Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad 

• https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-over-sexualization-of-harley-quinn
• The problem really arose when "Suicide Squad" was marketed by showing of Margot Robbie's booty
•  when somebody is asked to describe Harley Quinn, nine times out of ten, they go straight to the fact that they think she is hot
• https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/suicide-squad-margot-robbie-nails-the-problem-with-harley-quinn-the-joker-relationship-jared-leto-a7173641.html
• To prepare for the major role, which sees her dressed in hot pants so tiny that had to be digitally lengthened for international trailers
• she wears skimpy clothes because she enjoys doing so, not because she “wanted guys to look at her ass”
• The version of Harley that we see in Suicide Squad is over-stylized and turned into a sexual icon.
• https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/suicide-squad-margot-robbie-harley-quinn-hotpants-are-so-tiny-they-were-photoshopped-to-look-longer-a7169816.html - wears skimpy clothes because she enjoys doing so, not because she “wanted guys to look at her ass”. 
• https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/what-s-hot/story/wonder-woman-to-harley-quinn-here-s-what-every-woman-superhero-has-taught-us-1184438-2018-03-08 - Their sexualised portrayal made them unrealistic, even "dirty" in the minds of conservative parents
• https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sexualised-harley-quinn-in-suicide-squad-misses-the-point-of-the-character/#.qf5yktwf3
• https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-harley-quinn-is-actually-feminist-symbol - Why Harley Quinn is actually a feminist symbol 

Laura Mulvey

• https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vb_1ma9DKH0C&pg=PA252&lpg=PA252&dq=luara+mulvey&source=bl&ots=0mDh9FVurD&sig=9rztAjW0LdOFoFgmxP5dN7LHfus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5ocPZodnfAhVVUBUIHfKsBmQQ6AEwCHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=luara%20mulvey&f=false
• - https://venturebeat.com/community/2009/08/12/laura-mulvey-the-male-gaze-and-videogames/ - 
• The most common category of “sight” in film ... is what has come to be called The Male Gaze 
• Woman as Image; Man as Bearer of the Look
• http://www.composingdigitalmedia.org/f15_mca/mca_reads/mulvey.pdf
• Film Theory 101 – Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze Theory - https://www.filminquiry.com/film-theory-basics-laura-mulvey-male-gaze-theory/
• https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486
• https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=evB-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=women+play+a+passive+role+in+films&source=bl&ots=RIeHWEMcrO&sig=3osyLmnC7JEuWkx_wLchfRqubSI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi70MPtjebfAhUCMewKHZwXC1M4ChDoATADegQIBRAB#v=onepage&q=women%20play%20a%20passive%20role%20in%20films&f=false
• https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/kate-holliday/miley-cyrus_b_8419214.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=NHlCQfC8O--iMdw04WUkmA - empowered or exploited? 

How Mulvey's Pleasure and Narrative cinema theory is composed in Aladdin 1992.

How Mulvey's Pleasure and Narrative cinema theory is composed inAladdin 1992. 

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In Aladdin 1992 the character Jasmine has been encoded into the scene where the antagonist Jafar takes over rule through force by offering visual pleasure to the male spectator. In Laura Mulvey’s original essay on visual pleasure and narrative cinema she states that ‘In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking is split between active/male and passive/female’ which can clearly be identified between Jafar and jasmine. Straight away a mid-shot is shown of the two characters and within the mise-en-scene it can be seen that Jasmine is in handcuffs therefore connoting to the audience that she is unable to take control of what is happening within the scene. Soon after a close up is shown of Jafar raising a fist as she falls onto the floor, this allows the audience to understand that he is the active/male within the scene and that Jasmine is the passive female. The idea of the active/male and passive/female is again constantly reinforced within the scene when Jafar asks the genie within the diegetic dialogue ‘I wish for princess Jasmine to fall desperately in love with me’. By him saying this connotes to the audience that he is active in taking control over her feelings, he is directing how he wants the story to play out and that Jasmine is completely powerless to stop what is happening as she is potentially not strong enough to resist the genies spell. Laura Mulvey also states that the ‘male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure’ which Jafar most certainly is as Jasmine is powerless to stop what he wants. 

During the scene Jafar spits part of his apple on to Jasmine’s face in a mid-shot that instantly signifies disrespect to the character as though she is unworthy of being treated like a human being but instead like an object, as though her opinion is irrelevant which may be due to the fact Mulvey suggests that cinema reinforces patriarchal views. In the same mid shot Jafar also calls Jasmine a ‘Beautiful desert bloom’ which allows the audience to understand that he gains visual pleasure from her as he only perceives her as an object rather that the ability of her brain or any other talents that she may have, she is just there to be looked at and for him to indulge in scopophilia and gain visual pleasure from looking at the human form.

Visual Pleasure is also encoded into this scene with the use of the camera gaze. Laura Mulvey states that cinema allows the spectator to indulge in scopophilia as ‘cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking’. The camera gaze is used after Jafar asked for a wish and Jasmine stands up from the floor, in this long shot the camera zooms out in order to allow the audience to indulge in scopophilia and the camera lingers on her body. Although Jasmine is just a cartoon character, she still offers entertainment and sexual gratification by allowing the audience to gain pleasure in looking at the human form. Along with this as she stands the blue cloth falls of her revealing more of her body, plus the mise-en-scene shows the top half of her costume being just a bikini top allowing the spectators to gain more pleasure in looking as they don’t have to imagine a lot, they are able to just indulge in a childlike way of looking. 

The colours within the mise-en-scene also help to connote visual pleasure to the audience as most of the scene contains the colour red, along with Jasmines costume being completely red which has strong connotations of lust and sexual desire which could reinforce Laura Mulvey’s idea that women ‘connote to-be-looked-at-ness’. The colour red represents her a sexual object therefore it is okay for the audience to look at her. Along with this Jasmines accessories are gold and the colour gold may also connote love and passion again further reinforcing a passionate way of looking at the human form of which scopophilia is.

Bibliography / references.

1} Laura Mulvey (1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, New York, Oxford UP
2}https://www.filminquiry.com/film-theory-basics-laura-mulvey-male-gaze-theory/

Mulvey Pleasure and Narrative cinema

Mulvey Pleasure and Narrative cinema.

Mulvey states that film fascinates us and uses psychoanalysis to 'discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject'. Film allows us to engage our emotions through the images that are being portrayed on the screen which can alter and or manipulate what the audience gains visual pleasure from by encoding different themes and visual cues into the text. Mulvey suggests that visual pleasure is gained by the audience by allowing them to indulge in scopophilia where the most pleasure is by looking at the human form in most instances that of being a woman which leads onto the male gaze theory. Laura Mulvey states that ‘the cinema offers a number of possible pleasures’. The idea of scopophilia allows an individual to indulge in a childlike way of looking without being judged or told of for staring at another individual. 

    

In Hollywood and mainstream narrative, it often encodes the dominant patriarchal order where men are in charge and woman are objects of visual pleasure therefore cinema uses scopophilia of the human form to allow the active male audience to engage in a childlike looking of a passive female, as Laura Mulvey states that’s ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’, without being bound by social constructs.  The male gaze makes the audience identify with the male protagonist so that both male and female audiences view the female on the screen as an object of visual pleasure rather than a character that is going to help the narrative develop and move on. Mulvey describes ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look’ along with the fact that women in film are supposed to ‘connote to-be-looked-at-ness’. This means that filmmakers encode females into scenes to offer sexual gratification to the male spectator which helps the audience gain visual pleasure from seeing the female as a sexual object and nothing more. 

However, using the male gaze to allow the audience to indulge in scopophilia may also lead to fetishist scopophilia where the image of the woman on the screen also connotes a threat to the male spectator that needs to be relieved in order to enjoy the narrative and gain visual pleasure. From this there are only two ways in which the male spectator can escape the fear of femininity, the first being to investigate the woman, which can mean ‘transforming it into satisfying in itself’. This means to take away her mystery which can be done by fragmentation of her where the audience sees different parts of her body in an extremely sexualised way, which can lead to the audience no longer seeing her as a treat but more as an object of pleasure as they no longer see her as a whole but rather different body parts. Suddenly the woman is no longer a whole but rather sections of a body, little objects for enjoyment. 

The other way that the male spectator can escape the fear of femininity is by being denied castration which therefore portrays the female as a reassuring fetish rather than a dangerous character. This means that when a female character is portraying a potentially dangerous or threatening character such as a female superhero or supervillain, the filmmakers will then turn ‘the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous’. This can be done by placing them in outfit’s that leave little to the imagination such as characters like Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn. By doing this the male spectator no longer has to be fearful of castration but rather indulge in sexual gratification as the female character is turned back into a sexualised object.

The male gaze is used to ‘describe the cinematic angle of a heterosexual male on a female character’ and can be split into 3 parts, the first being the camera gaze, which means that the camera may linger on a females body either in a long shot, or multiple close ups allowing the audience to indulge longer in looking. The second is the character gaze which is where the audience sees the characters within the scene indulging in scopophilia themselves therefore making it okay for the audience to also do this. Finally, there is the audience gaze that with a combination of the camera and character gaze they feel it’s okay to sexualise the female on the screen and also indulge in a childlike way of looking the female. 

References 

•    Original essay, Laura Mulvey (1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, New York, Oxford UP
• Psychology Today (6^thNovember 2017) (online) available from https://www.psychologytoday.com(Accessed 7^thDecember 2018) 

How Lacan' Mirror stage theory is compossed in The Lion King

How Lacan' Mirror stage theory is composed in The Lion King 

In this clip from The Lion King it clearly links to Lacan's mirror theory when the character Simba is seen looking at his reflection in the water through a mid-shot that soon turns into a reflection of his late father Mufasa. This shows the mirror theory as the character Simba may feel unsettled as the reflection of his great fathers doesn't reflect how he feels about himself. He looked up to his late father, he respected him and admired him, he saw his father as a stable entity that he aimed to be like and wanted to take after however the way he actually feels is like a failure, never living up to his reflection. Lacan states that our inside self feels chaotic and our reflection is stable therefore we aim to be more like our one-dimensional reflection of which Mufasa represents. 

Simba also says while looking into the water in the diegetic dialogue 'That’s not my father, that's just my reflection' which connotes to the audience that he is aware of the fact that his father is missing from his life, he is aware that there is something lacking that he feels that he will never live up to. He is constantly aspiring to be like his father but feels that he will never meet up to it, he will always only be himself as we can never live up to the image we see in the mirror or in our reflection. Within the mise-en-scene the character Simba also looks disappointed when he realises that what he is seeing is himself reinforcing the idea that we will never be able to live up the to our ‘ideal self’ of which his father is to him. 

In this clip Mufasa also represents the super ego pushing Simba to be the best possible version of himself that he can be, this is shown when his voice says in the diegetic dialogue 'Remember who you are'. This shows Mufasa to be the super ego as he is pushing Simba to be great, to do the morally right thing for everyone even if he doesn’t want to. He makes Simba see the good instead of that bad in the situation that he is in. Mufasa is helping Simba to get closer to his ideal self that he sees in his father and acts as his motivation to become the ideal entity that he sees in his reflection. 

The idea of lack within this scene from The Lion King is also encoded into the film through the use of technical conventions such as the shot types seen. There are many high angle shots looking down on Simba as he is looking up which may represent the idea that he is lacking being a dominant character which he was destined to be by becoming a king but tried to escape this fate. His ideal self sees him becoming the Lion King but instead he ran away and therefore this role is lacking in his current life. Along with this the scene uses mainly low-key lighting which connotes a dramatic effect to the scene even a mysterious feel of what could or could have been if the lack in Simba’s life disappeared and he finally reached his idea self in becoming the reflection he sees in the water, the reflection of his late father. 

At the start of the scene a physical struggle is also shown as Simba is trying to catch up to the character Rafiki, this involves close ups of Simba falling down ditches and long shots of him getting stuck in vines. This helps show the idea that his real self is chaotic and unable to match ideal calm self that his reflection will later show as he sees his father. This shows that our outside self doesn’t feel like it matches our inside self. 

Lacans Mirror stage Theory

Lacan' Mirror Stage Theory

Lacan states that the mirror stage starts from when a person is an infant and looks into the mirror for the first time and before this moment, they never saw themselves as a single individual identity but rather they just exist, before the mirror stage they are at one with everything surrounding them. He states that when an infant first sees themselves in the mirror they no longer view themselves as separate body parts but rather as a whole person that is seemingly one dimensional in the mirror. This is the exact moment that a person begins to develop a sense of ‘the self’, the person them becomes and individual identity and sees themselves as ‘I’ At this point in a person’s life they develop the conscious ego and unconscious id. 

The mirror stage can be unsettling to a person as the person on the outside doesn't represent how one feels on the inside which creates an inside self and an outside self, the one reflected in the mirror. This may also be unsettling as we don’t necessarily look how we feel. The one on the inside is ever changing and feels chaotic as they can't truly express how they feel to others around them and when we try to explain we may fail to do justice to our real intentions, and we may become oblivious to the real us. The one on the outside which is reflected in the mirror however is viewed as a stable entity which will never portray to the outside world and how one feels on the inside, they represent the super ego which a person is always aiming to be like, they aim to be more like the one-dimensional stable entity which is reflected in front of them.

Lacan states that we will always be aspiring to be more like the reflection we see in the mirror and we will do this from the start of the mirror stage and during the rest of our lives, this is the reason why we try to dress the best as possible, have a nice hair cut etc. We will always try to control our external appearance in order to appear better to others than the chaos within us. Lacan also states that because of this we will always misunderstand others and others will always misunderstand us. He states the people around us will forever be stuck seeing the entity that we perceive on the outside and that no one will ever be able to know the chaotic self that we are on the inside. People around us will never be able to experience us in the same way that we do as they only see the image we see in the mirror and not the image we have of ourselves inside. 

Lacan also suggests that because we will never be able to be like the stable entity in the mirror, we will feel a ‘lack’ in our lives. This lack may go from relationships, to our career or even a lack of motivation as we cannot reach the ‘ideal self’ that we constantly see in our reflection. We will always be lacking in one area of life and will constantly be aiming to fill this need to feel like a whole identity, to feel stable rather than a chaotic stream of consciousness.

 

References. 

·     Lacan Online.com (13^thSeptember 2010) (online) Avaliable from http://www.lacanonline.com(accessed 2^ndDecember 2018)