Henry,
What you’re saying is that post ’75 Mulvey realized that gurlz like to watch boyz, too. Freud was wrong.
Therefore, a strict representationalism would involve nothing more than a fairness doctrine in which there’s an equal opportunity to gaze. As this, in a manner of speaking, was easily accommodated, after three years of pondering, our author(ess) moved on.
It’s furthermore obvious that cinematic representationalism closely follows the poly sci flag, or the manner in which various groups are/not represented by virtue of number. In other words, to inquire why and to what ends people gaze is roughly analogous to the old expression, “An equal distribution of inequality”. Both beg questions regarding ends; which in turn delves into issues of meaning—or ‘signification’.
Yet my answer might appear to some to be (provocatively) simple: The impetus of early Woman’s Lib provided a platform for a gaze-equal screen. Women could now stare at nekked men because they now had the means to pay. Two generations hence, this tendency now ebbs and flows in some sort of Kultural zeitgeist. To a small extent, women are now taught that gazing isn't nice.
I agree that the distinction rep/sig is a convenience, at best. This is because, strictly speaking, a philosophy of representationalism would depend upon an extreme empiricism that’s supported by two pillars: analytic truths and reductionism of sensation to word. In this world, meaning would be self-evident. Anyone who saw things ‘properly’ would have access to the truths that are simply theirs for the taking. And this, to a great extent, is still the dominant ideology of Hollywood-- as our heroes are those with clarity of vision that the less-heroic lack.
Yet the fact is that we derive meaning from words, concepts and things in a rather jumbled and disputed fashion. We generally sneer at orthodox Marxists and Randites who pretend some genre of ‘objectivity’ that the rest of us lack. Quine, in any case, finished off the epistemic issue ‘way back in ’51….
And yes, I also agree that cinema has always been about desiring machines. My dispute seems to be that in many cases the cinematic object of desire seems to be more of the clearly visible than of the symbolic order. Is there, perhaps, a misunderstanding among certain individuals that semiotics is all there is to significance?
Moreover, much is missed when the viewer simply doesn’t grasp what’s directly before his/her very eyes; in which case semiology becomes a cover story. In other words, when the chorus in Blue sings ‘Ean tais glossis’, you either understand the text, or don’t….there is nothing to decode.
BH
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 14:13:50 +0200
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Screen Theory query
To: [log in to unmask]
In her 1975 article, Mulvey's position was: the female dominates the image (as the object of the look), while the look itself (subjective) is male. The look being more powerful than that which is being looked at. In 1978, Mulvey somewhat corrected her initial all too dogmatic position, not least because traditionally it has been women who have selected the movies they wanted to watch (which implied a paranoid alienness to what women wanted in the first place: how strange women are! Strictly speaking, they are aliens!). The woman as alien to her/itself: What do women want? Shouldn't women know?
A good example of the female look may be found in Karel Reisz' ISADORA (1968), particularly when the female protagonist (Vanessa Redgrave) watches her lover Singer (Jason Robards) shave. Mulvey realised that to presuppose a male, heterosexual viewer was completely reductionist.
Two things have to be said in defence of a politics of signification: 1. Since signification deals with meaning, how can you clearly separate it from representation, which also has to do with meanings? 2. However reductionist semiology/semiotics was, it was at least driven by the utopia of total rationality and understandibility (ratiocination). The shift to emotions, a contre coeur, seems more than a little reactionist. Let's return to the queston of desire, which is dynamic.
Henry
I generally avoid potty talk because of my strong preference for citation and source over gossip. Ditto for ex-cathedra pronouncements of the sort that my own two girls abandoned in their late teens. That’s because their becoming a lawyer and a chemist necessitated a respect for facts—provocative or otherwise.
In this case, my reference to Mulvey’s article is clear; and board readers who are sufficiently versed in the old philosophical polemic between representation and meaning are free to decide for themselves on which side Mulvey’s article falls. Indeed, Sarah’s un-named source saw a rupture between the two modes of discourse, and I do, too.
That certain hidebound semioticians cannot see what others clearly observe on the surface is their problem—which is ostensibly augmented by the necessity that their own intellectual tools dictate. This, of course, has indeed included feminism, which is why I’ve always seen Mulvey's ’75 article as such a welcome break.
On other hand, I personally do not see semiotics as necessarily trivial. Harraway, for example, wonderfully described how sex and power works its way into Biological theory. In (decon)Law, it’s rather clear that certain discursive forms carry more truth than others: white over black, male over female, etc…
Yet it would still seem to me that Mulvey’s article trivializes semiotics in the sense that she explains 95% of what needs to be explained. It’s all super-fically self-evident that moovees are made because guys like to stare at girls and imagine having sex with them. A darkened room with a screen affords them this opportunity because, with the exception of Liz Berkley, the girl doesn't stare back. The rest is dross.
BH
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 21:39:53 -0400
From:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: Screen Theory query
To:
[log in to unmask]
i generally avoid responding to the provocations of bill harris, but when there are such blatant factual misrepresentations as this they need to be pointed out . . . the idea of a “politics of signification” is one that was developed by feminists – including mulvey and her followers – precisely as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which “the simple truth of sexism” gets inscribed into our discourses . . .
its purpose is specifically to expose this simple truth, not to obscure it . . . one may agree or disagree with the goals, and one can find fault with the [admittedly tendentious] methods, but to call the work of two generations of feminists semioticians “trivia . . . to obscure the simple truth of sexism” is simple misrepresentation
m
Hi Sarah,
Are you familiar with her "famous" 1975 article, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema?
Women are represented on screen as sex objects; and the intentionality on the part of Hollywood producers is rather clear in this regard.
Therefore, any epi-phenomenal search for a deeper meaning is totally besides the point: all you need to know is what is clearly...represented.
Therefore, searching for hidden signifiers is a form of modern scholastics in which the machine of higher learning generates trivia in order to obscure the simple truth of sexism. This, of course, is part and parcel to the auto-labeling of filmic representors as "artists".
Ciao, Bill
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 20:31:34 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Screen Theory query
To: [log in to unmask]
I recently read an essay on the "Screen Theory" of the 70s and 80s which claimed that Laura Mulvey differed from most of the other Screen critics in that her work pursued "a politics of representation," while many of her fellow critics dealt with a "politics of signification."
I am struggling with the difference, and would appreciate any help that the list would care to give me. Thank you.
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