Fetishism and Visual Pleasure

Merp. Busy day today. Woke up at 6:45, thinking Is it really the weekend? Why am I awake? I went to go get my haircut (and pet their cute black cat in the process). Worked some on my paper. Went to the honors end of year bash, which was okay. It included some delicious sandwiches at least. And then I went with Sasha to look at 2 apartments, neither of which were exactly promising. The second one was okay, but a little far from the bus stop, and both of us are still leaning toward Kailua. Although, of course, at this point, we're really willing to rent whatever. 2 more weeks!!! Eep!


Dinner was disappointing. After dinner I wrote about 2 pages of my paper, all while reading my sources (haha, because I only managed to take notes on 1 of the sources last night before I really needed to sleep even to get 5 hours of sleep...) Then I kept getting distracted by friend stuffs, which was necessary but definitely distractd me from getting anything done. And currently, while I am still writing my paper, people are also partying in my room. *sigh* Oh, college. Oh, dorms...


THIS is why I start papers that are due on a Thursday the Friday before they are due. That way I can  allow for some distractions, even if I don't particularly like to.  =) Ugh. But I have since written a total of 4 pages, a lot of which may eventually be revised out tomorrow night, but meh. At least I have some stuff written for now. And I think I'm pretty good as far as analyzing my artifact with the chosen criteria.


It is 1:40 am, but I am at least going to try to write my 2 pages of analysis before sleeping tonight.


Ack. I'm more stressed at this point about finding a place to live than by writing this paper. Although I am still awfully worried about getting a good grade on this paper. *sigh*


Anyway. I'm going to post a short excerpt from my paper to finish this post, and then continue working. 

Women have been looked at and made into fetishistic objects for centuries, in plays and speakeasies and other spectacles. The creation and spreading of film media throughout the 20^th century created a whole new aspect of visual pleasure, fetishism, and a new role for women as objects and spectacles. Laura Mulvey first published “Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema” in 1973, examining in psychoanalytic terms how gaze functions in cinema, the role the audience plays, and the ultimate fetishistic affect upon the women in the film. Film is unique in the way it creates a separation between audience and characters, and thus women hold a different function in film than in other spectacles (Mulvey 1973).

            In Freudian psychoanalysis, scopophilia is defined as taking pleasure from looking at an object (Mulvey 1975). Often, scopophilia involves viewing other people as objects or distant reflections rather than as a true person. Film allows for scopophilia in several important ways. It allows for surreptitious observation, with the audience “looking in on a private world,” remaining separate from and unaffected by the world existing in the film. Cinema focuses on the image of the human body, allowing for the audience to undertake a narcissistic scopophilia as the audience develops curiosity as well as recognizes similarities and differences between themselves and the image presented on the screen. The audience identifies with the image on the screen as a representation of their own body, and thus they derive pleasure from looking at a mirror image of themselves and build up their own ego. The audience takes on a unique role as viewers of a separate world, and thus each image in a film is manipulated in a way to please the audience, and, according to Mulvey at least, the male viewer of a female body in particular.

Cheers!