Summary
Mulvey uses the directorial work of Josef von Sternberg to illustrate the concept of fetishistic scopophilia—or the erotic instinct of looking that is divorced from time and narrative itself. She argues that in his films featuring Marlene Dietrich, Sternberg focuses on fragments of the actress's body with a series of close-ups that lead her to be "the direct recipient of the spectator's look" (812). Notably, the male gaze of the protagonist is often absent in Sternberg's films, with the most erotic parts of the movie taking place when the male hero is unaware.
Hitchcock, by contrast, presents the perspective of his male heroes as equal to the audience's; what he sees is what the spectators see. Mulvey argues that Hitchcock's male characters are as entwined with voyeurism psychologically as they are socially and narratively, citing a policeman from Vertigo and a wealthy man from Marnie. Their "look," she argues, is directed toward the woman both as an erotic fetish and as a sadistic drive to police, punish, and control.
Mulvey concludes her essay by summarizing her major points. In the final paragraph of the essay, Mulvey suggests that an alternative form of cinema will "free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space" rather than simply enacting the look of the male gaze (816). Such interventions, Mulvey asserts, would only bring to light the extent to which filmmakers have relied on voyeuristic paradigms that reinforce patriarchal perceptions of the world.
Analysis
In this final section of the essay, Mulvey draws on two popular directors to serve as examples of the psychoanalytic intersection between Hollywood films' content (or plot) and form (or camera work). Having already determined that women on the screen represent a castration threat (psychoanalytically speaking), Mulvey explains how the films of Josef von Sternberg and Alfred Hitchcock both address this threat through narrative and style. For Mulvey, Sternberg's work is suggestive of fetishistic scopophilia—that is, turning the woman into a fetish object so that the threat of castration is no longer real. This fetishistic scopophilia comes in the form of close-ups and fragmented views of a woman's (Marlene Dietrich) body, so that viewers are unable to ever regard her as a whole person. Instead, she is figuratively dismembered on the screen in a way to which even the male protagonist is not privy. While it may surprise or baffle readers to hear Mulvey argue that even in the absence of the male hero's gaze, women are still objectified, she answers this question by returning to the notion of the ego from earlier in the essay: in these films, viewers themselves become the bearers of the male gaze, and the fragmented body of the woman becomes the entire content of the film.
Mulvey argues that Hitchcock, by contrast, marries the traditional use of the male gaze with distinct narratives of castration mitigation; the male protagonist's look is the same as the viewer's, and his character embodies the forces of punishment and control necessary to render the castration threat nonexistent (police officer, wealthy man, etc.). Thus, Hitchcock's films represent for Mulvey a wedding of voyeuristic style (the male gaze objectifying an eroticizing a woman without her knowledge) and sadistic content—the urge to punish and police stemming from the woman's notable lack. In this way, Mulvey shows how narrative film is imbued with patriarchal perceptions on multiple levels, from the screenplay that determines the narrative to the man behind the camera who determines what is seen and how.
While these concepts are challenging and rely on readers' familiarity with psychoanalysis, Mulvey's essay is fundamentally about the objectification of women in film. Such objectification, however, cannot be remedied simply by changing directorial style or imagining an unconventional plot. Instead, Mulvey's essay encourages readers to examine popular film through a more complex albeit more intangible lens—that of psychoanalysis, of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious human mind. As such, Mulvey does not provide an explicit alternative to the conventions she has discussed. She instead suggests only that the camera dispense with the male gaze and that audiences be allowed to detach from the film they are watching. Though she does not advise it outright, Mulvey herein acknowledges that one potential solution to the problem of patriarchal filmmaking is to create more films that break the "fourth wall," the figurative mechanism by which voyeurism itself persists.
