scopophillia, the ideal ego, and film

In the article Visual Pleasure & Narrative, Film Laura Mulvey uses film of the past, and that which is contemporary to this article to push her feminist agenda, and defends it with the Freud’s ideas of repression, sexuality, and the unconscious mind. In the Times Literary Supplement of May 23rd, 1997 one critic wrote that Freud was a "creator of a complex pseudo-science which should be recognized as one of the great follies of Western civilization". I will ad that this is not uncommon criticism of Freud, and I fear the same for Mulvey.

Mulvey writes that film uses two mechanisms in propagating the phallocentric point of view, the first being the visual pleasure of watching a film, and its relationship to scopophillia. Scopophillia is the love of watching. The second mechanism, the narrative, provides the ideal ego for man.

Mulvey uses scopophillia, with voyeuristic connotations (eroticizing the object), which again may relate to Freud’s anal stage. The audience member sits in the dark, and derives his pleasure from watching the female, as object, therefore possessing her, while remaining unseen. It is this gaze that helps continue the patriarchal manipulation of film.

Ideal ego concerns the relationship of the male viewer, and male protagonist. So when the object of sexual desire (woman) is possessed, the male audience member does not lose his dominance over her, because of relationship to the protagonist as the viewer’s ideal ego.

Both of these mechanisms by commodifying the female rob her of her humanity. I do understand, and agree that the commoditization of any person does remove humanity from all aspects of interaction. Commoditization of people occurs in all media and recently of all gender types.

What concerns me in this article is the methodology, in which Mulvey reaches this most basic point. How is it possible to quote a phallocentric thinker in sincerity to support an argument against a media based in this thought. Once Mulvey uses Freud’s beliefs she gives them substantiality within her world, and by doing that legitimizes the machine, which she is trying to destroy.

It is quite possible that I am misreading the article, and in fact she could be making fun of Freud’s unreasonable phallocentric theories, and it was just too tongue in cheek for me.