We are more or less familiar with the idea of “fetishes.” Sigmund Freud has a very curious explanation of fetishes. According to him, it all has to do with penises. A male child imagines that, like him, his mother also has a penis. When he realizes that she does not have a phallus, it causes him to fear losing his penis as well. That is, he fears being castrated. Idolizing his mother, he goes through two processes that work in parallel: on the one hand, he does not come to terms with the fact that his mother does not possess a penis. However, in order to deal with the fear that he too might lose his penis, he substitutes the idea of his mother’s penis with that of another organ (could be his nose or his foot, for example), deriving sexual pleasure from it. According to Freud, “[a fetish] remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it” (817).

If we are to follow Freud’s reasoning, it seems like that it is, at the end of the day, the penis that a man is sexually attracted to, not a person. By attributing his attraction to a penis to another organ of a woman, a man continues to feel attracted to a woman. Does that organ, then, become the repository of his mother’s non-existent penis?

Freud doesn’t end there. He has another point that I found quite curious: “It also saves the fetishist from becoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual objects” (817). He soon sums up the three options that a man has, by admitting that he does not know why some men become attracted to women by creating a fetish, while others just become gay and, once again, it also goes back to genitals: “Probably no male human being is spared the fight of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a consequence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are not frankly able to explain” (818).

There are, therefore, in Freud’s view, three directions that a man goes on: a straight man without a fetish, a straight man with a fetish, and a gay man. Those without a fetish are startled by the sight of a female genital and manage to overcome it. A straight man with a fetish substitutes his mother’s penis with a certain organ that makes women attractive to him because that organ then becomes the invisible penis, while a gay man, well, remains attracted to the penis.

As a gay man, I found this essay quite interesting, even though not entirely believable. Curious is the word. I guess we will never know for sure how exactly it all works.

According to the author in on page 819 Fetishisms meant”  A fetish of this sort, doubly derived from contrary ideas, is of course especially durable. In other instances the divided attitude shows itself in what the fetishist does with his fetish, whether in reality or in his imagination.  He also states that there are many and weighty additional proofs of the divided attitude of fetishist to the question of the castration  of women”. The definition shows the concept of fetishism and the divide in fetishism towards their actions and thoughts whether it’s in reality or in imagination.

In this article talks about divided attitude which says” Returning to my description of fetishism, I may say that there are many and weighty additional proofs of the divided attitude of fetishists to the question of the castration of women”. Some of the examples stated is ” In him the need to carry out the castration which he disavows has come to the front. His action contains in itself the two mutually incompatible assertions: ‘ the woman has still got a penis’ and my father has castrated the woman”. Another variant which is also a parallel to fetishism in social psychology, might be see in  in the Chinese custom of mutilating the female foot”. These examples try to example the idea about women which reflect a phycological phenomenon to fetishism. The second example try to explain the Chinese practice of foot binding which is a culture tradition involving the mutilation of female feet to make them smaller and pleasing.

Some of the barrier Freud encounters is Cultural sensitivity which is the awareness of regarding sexuality. Also there is  Human psychology which Freud tries to express that human sexuality is multifaced and has a difficult processes. There is also Empirical evidence which shows how Freud has a theory on different definition explain fetishism due to the empirical date.  There is also Subjectivity of interpretation which tries to show awareness of the psychoanalytic interpretation and the different behaviors of fetishism, Lastly there is evolution of psychoanalytic theory this shows Freud ideas evolve and all his different theories. His hesitation about fetishism about his reflecting about different concepts.

Freud hesitation in his analysis about fetishism from combination of factors including cultural sensitivities, the complexity of human psychology, limitations in empirical evidence, the subjectivity of interpretation and the evolution of his own theoretical framework. These are all the different types of ideas and how Freud tries to explain about fetishism in this article.

In his work “Fetishism” Freud makes a bold statement where he announces that every fetish is a substitute for the penis, not just any penis but the woman’s penis. He gives an example of one of his patients whose fetish was the nose, he ruminates on why the fetishist (the patient) fetishizes the nose. His first assertion was that the patient simply refused his perception that women do not possess a penis which Freud immediately shuts down however his reason was not in any way conventional in regards to how me or you would think why this assertion is wrong. He says “No, that could not be true: for if a woman had been castrated, then his own possession of a penis was in danger.” Meaning that rather than it being something pleasurable or arousing for the boy which a fetish supposed to do in this context, the image of castration would quickly replace that feeling with revulsion or rebellion. Also, the reason why I believe he uses castration here is because if the boy refuses to believe that a woman does not possess a penis and thus believing that they do have a penis then that would imply that the woman has been castrated because it just isn’t there or not there anymore. His next assertion is that the boy “scotomizes” (forgets) his perception of the woman’s lack of a penis. However, this would not make sense because it also implies that his perception of a woman not having a penis would be entirely wiped out and as Freud rebuttals, “on the contrary, we see that the perception has persisted, and that a very energetic action has been undertaken to maintain the disavowal.” Thus assertion 2 isn’t correct either because rather than forgetting, the patient seems to be keenly aware of that fact a woman doesn’t have a penis but is also actively believing that they do. His third and final assertion is that the boy represses his perception of a woman’s lack of a penis by substituting it with something else. As Freud says “He has retained that belief, but he has also given it up…in his mind the woman has got a penis, in spite of everything; but this penis is no longer the same as it was before…Something else has taken its place… and now inherits the interest which was formerly directed to its predecessor” Meaning that the boy still believes that a woman possesses a penis but since doing so would put the image of castration in his mind, he instead focuses on the idea that maybe a woman does possess a penis but it’s not in the location that you would normally think a penis is located at, say, the nose for example and thus a fetish is born at least according to Freud. This however has a downside and it’s the aversion to the actual female genitals which is the symbol of repression that takes place within him.  

Mulvey’s essay was a difficult essay for me (not just me, I hope), but I wanted to try to break it down and contribute with a bit of my own experience. Apart from the very great detail Mulvey takes to break down the dichotomy between scopophilia and ego libido, what stood out to me was the discussion of camera work and the camera’s place in highlighting those two aspects of narrative film. The camera is human perception — at least it tries its best to replicate it — and its ultimate goal is to remove/blur the screen space so as to better integrate ourselves into the screen. This is essentially ego libido, as it gives the spectator a sense of power that the protagonist has. 

While reading this, it reminded me of Oppenheimer, and the “ideal” viewing experience instructed by the director, Christopher Nolan. Nolan said that the intended way to view the film was in 70mm IMAX, it was the most immersive formatting that would project you into the film in the closest way possible. However, I do not think that the tragedy of the atomic bomb is necessarily what Mulvey is arguing. For that, look at 2011’s Drive, where Ryan Gosling is a strong, silent stuntman-criminal who pushes Carey Mulligan into the corner of the elevator to kiss her before killing the hitman next to him. It feels as though the film epitomized Mulvey’s work to a tee, Mulligan is only seen as a mother in dresses and skirts, tending to her child and being submissive to her husband. Gosling, on the other hand, is domineering, literally driving the plot of the story (which revolves around him “helping” her without considering her desires). 

As a cisgendered, straight, white man, it took an embarrassingly long time to not only be made aware of this reading of narrative film, but it is truly only very recently where it has become apparent to me. Most teen comedies of the 80s (Fast Times, Sixteen Candles, etc.) revolve around the portrayal of women as strict, still images that are there solely for the attention of the male-centric audience and protagonists. Another unfortunately too-perfect moment is when Anthony Michael Hall’s character in Candles takes advantage of and rapes a drunk girl he was going to “take home.” That film supports Mulvey’s argument because of how awfully true it is, and why this analysis of narrative cinema needs to be more popular.

The last film I will relate to the text is Chantal Ackerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle, as it is a great example of alternate cinema that Mulvey states will break up this traditional pleasure-driven view of cinema. In the film, a depressed girl, recently broken up with her girlfriend, removes all the furniture from her apartment except her mattress, walks around the room naked, and eats sugar from a bag while trying to come up with a letter to send to her ex. character finally gets to see her ex again, in which the film cuts to a fifteen minute sex scene between the two characters, ending with Ackerman being kicked out once again. A perfect example of how cinema does not have to be pleasure-driven, as the full frontal nudity of the final scene is very raw but certainly not glamorous. It does not portray one dominating another, it does not even portray a man and a woman. It is just sex, the authentic experience of emotion, and does not attempt to sexualize it in any way. Bringing it back to camera work, which Mulvey finds so profound (as do I), it is fixed, only switching angles sparingly. Unlike most sex scenes, which highlight the bodies of women in gross ways and attempt to make the viewer feel that he is the one taking control over the woman, Je, Tu, Il, Elle pairs the often-isolating nature of sex with the emotional intimacy it provides. The fixed camera angles only keep the audience away from that moment because it is not our moment, it is theirs and theirs alone.

I hope I did not stray too far from the text, but I am minoring in film and combining it with my English major scratches the analytical part of my brain.

As promised, here are answers to the midterm questions. I didn’t have a very good key from prior terms, and I asked a lot of new questions on new texts, so I had to “take” my own exam, answering all 18 questions.

Uh, it was pretty tough. Be sure to check your iffy answers against mine, and feel free to reach out if you’re still puzzled on anything. Good review for the final exam, which will emphasize the new material from Freud onward but will also bring back some of this older material.