Operationalizing the male gaze: reconstructing Laura Mulvey’s analysis of visual pleasure

Abstract

Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ (1975) is the most widely cited, heavily anthologized and endlessly summarized essay in Film Studies. It is a foundational text that frames mainstream narrative cinema as a type of discourse that disseminates patriarchal ideology. Rather than summarize the essay again or repeat the many critiques developed by other scholars, this essay presents a line-by-line commentary on Mulvey’s interpretation of visual features in Josef von Sternberg’s films presented in section III C2 of her essay, in order to determine the logical relation between those visual features and theoretical concepts (especially fetishism). This involves rationally reconstructing the implicit operational procedures (empirical methods and evidence) Mulvey employed to interpret patriarchal values in mainstream narrative cinema. Operationalizing demystifies Mulvey’s interpretive activity by bridging the gap between her abstract theoretical predicates and filmic images, rendering the act of interpretation replicable by students new to film analysis.