QUESTION 2

Max. 400 words [Max. 10 points]

2. What it the male gaze according to Laura Mulvey? Describe in detail and illustrate
with an example from a film (either one discussed during the course, or one of your own
choice).

Mulvey’s male gaze theory was formulated through her initial link between the fascination with film and
the psychoanalytic structures of human subjectivity. She writes that “psychoanalytic theory is…
appropriate here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has
structured film form.”1 I will use a clip from Dr. No to identify the male gaze.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQXnfjBd-hA&ab_channel=JamesBond007)

Mulvey argues that Freud’s model of psychoanalysis “depends on the image of the castrated woman to
give order and meaning to its world”2 and that due to woman’s “real absence of a penis,”3 she can only
signify the sexual opposite of a man. This is intrinsic to castration anxiety: the male fear of emasculation
founded on the childhood discovery of sexual difference. Mulvey explains that if men fear castration
(subconsciously) then the image of women signifies the threat of castration.

The male gaze is cinema’s way of dealing with castration fear. The male gaze is composed of two parts,
the first is objectification: “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and
displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to
connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Women displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle.”4
The structure of looking in films encourages the spectator to objectify women - this is achieved through
techniques such as the halting of narrative to encourage the spectator to gaze at the female subject. In the
clip above Honey is pictured getting out of the sea, singing and inspecting shells. These don’t advance the
narrative but offer time for the audience (and Bond) to gaze.

The second part is the spectator’s identification with a male protagonist. “The split between spectacle and
narrative supports the man’s role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen. The
man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the
bearer of the look of the spectator…This is made possible… by structuring the film around a main
controlling figure (often a man) with whom the spectator can identify.”5 In the Dr. No clip the narrative
advances when Bond introduces himself, before he had been looking at her in a voyeuristic way, and it
takes him only 3 lines to say “No, I’m just looking.” In the scene he holds all the power and directs the
narrative, Honey is simply there to be looked at. This short clip meets and displays every aspect of
Mulvey’s theory on the male gaze.

1
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In: Visual and Other Pleasures. Language,
Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pg14
2
IBID
3
IBID
4
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In: Visual and Other Pleasures. Language,
Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pg18
5
IBID
QUESTION 3
Max. 400 words [Max. 10 points]
3. What are cinema’s ‘ghosts’ Jacques Derrida refers to? While you can refer to and
quote from Derrida’s text in your answer, you should formulate in your own words.

Jacques Derrida was fascinated with the idea of ghosts. Derrida’s discussion of Karl Marx in Spectres of
Marx is his most famous input to hauntology but Derrida also refers to cinema’s ghosts in an interview as
a reference to the range of elements that return or persist from the social or cultural past, as in the manner
of a ghost. Derrida’s idea about cinema’s ghosts rests on the link between psychoanalysis and filmmaking
which he calls contemporaries due to their shared links to projection, spectacle and perception of
spectacle. In fact Derrida goes so far as to argue that cinematic perception can make understandable
psychoanalytic practise through the shared experiences of hypnosis, fascination, identification which are
common features between the two that uncover a “primordial” sign of a “thinking together” between the
two practices.

Derrida argues that the “thoroughly spectral structure of the cinematic image” results in the
communication of every film viewer with some work of the unconscious. Freud called this idea the
experience of what is “unheimlich” (uncanny).6

Evidently psychoanalysis is key to understanding Derrida’s concept. In a different interview Derrida said
that cinema plus psychoanalysis equals the science of ghosts. Fundamentally the ghosts of cinema rest on
the belief in cinema. Derrida describes a system of credit in art that discusses various art forms and their
believability: “At the movies you believe without believing but this believing without believing remains a
believing.”7 The screen presents us with apparitions that the spectator believes and sometimes idolises.
The movie camera made possible the believability of cinema, which no other art form can attain.
Derrida says cinema is “historical through and through, with that supplementary aura, that particular
memory that lets us project ourselves into films of the past.”8 When we project ourselves onto the screen
we also project our own personal ghosts onto the screen and whilst remembering the ghosts that already
haunt us we uncover new ghosts and in turn project them onto the screen as well.
Cinema’s ghosts recall and embed political, social, religious, gender and every other type of imagery onto
the screen. Every spectator projects something different and private onto the screen. The collation of
everyone’s personal “ghosts” create a collective representation, but Derrida cautions the idea of a
community of vision or of representation due to the solitude of the spectator in the cinema (as opposed to
the collective viewing at a theatre).

6
Baecque, Antoine de, Thierry Jousse, and Peggy Kamuf. “Cinema and Its Ghosts: An Interview with
Jacques Derrida.” Discourse 37, no. 1–2 (2015): 22–39. Pg 26
7
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg27
8
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg 27
QUESTION 4
Max. 400 words [Max. 10 points]
4. How does European cinema relate to Hollywood according to Thomas Elsaesser? Do
you agree with him? Give examples of (a) film(s) in your answer.

According to Elsaesser the relationship between European cinema and Hollywood is primarily defined by
Hollywood’s global cinematic dominance. For Hollywood, European cinema is a market. “It makes little
difference whether one is talking about the Indian cinema or the Dutch cinema, the French cinema or the
Chilean cinema: none is a serious competitor for America’s domestic output, but each national cinema is a
“market” for American films.” 9 Elsaesser argues that America’s film producing hegemony is a result of
Hollywood’s “anti-mythology” renewal in which “death, destruction, violence, trauma and catastrophe…
form the central core”10 which Europe has not adopted. America’s hegemony is obvious through EU box
office sales but no evidence is given to suggest American cinema is more violent that European cinema. I
would use the examples of Braveheart and Trainspotting to show this. As the two most famous films
about Scotland they both portray very different depictions of Scotland whilst both incorporating violence,
death and trauma. It is obvious that one is a Hollywood film and the other from Scotland but not based on
the criteria that Elsaesser puts forward. Nonetheless, Elsaesser provokes thought by pointing out that the
only collective entertainment in Europe comes from football, Eurovision and America.

Another of Elsaesser’s arguments is that Hollywood’s huge budgets have resulted in a dependency on its
export market (Europe is by far the largest) in which “audiences are apparently very resistant to non-white
heroes. Thus, Hollywood has itself been ‘colonized’ by its ‘European’ or ‘national’ audiences.” 11 Because
Elsaesser provides no evidence that identifies non-American audiences as less tolerant to racial difference
on screen renders this point to be very questionable as it only shifts the blame for Hollywood’s racial
issues onto foreign audiences without substantially fleshing out the claim.

Of course the relationship is not confined to a producer-consumer relationship and Elsaesser makes
several other points such as the adoption of American directors “as elective father-figures” 12 by some
European directors. Some of these “father-figures” were European exiles which leads into another of his
arguments that perhaps European cinema and Hollywood exist “in a space set up like a hall of mirrors, in
which recognition, imaginary identity and mis-cognition enjoy equal status, creating value out of pure
difference.”13 A constant back and forth relation between cinemas across the ocean meaning that for
Elsaesser, Europe is as much a significant other as to Hollywood as the US is for European audiences.

Elsaesser raises ideas from various academics about the relationship between Hollywood and Europe. It
can be difficult to pinpoint a consistent narrative in his paper as some viewpoints clash and many are not
substantiated. The ideas mentioned above summarise the key concepts about how the two cinemas relate.

9
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg38
10
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg52
11
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg40
12
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg41
13
Cinema and its Ghosts Pg 47