Someone (I can’t remember who) was asking to see the syllabus, etc. for my 252 that has a climate fiction theme. Here goes, and see you tomorrow:

https://engl252fa23.commons.gc.cuny.edu

I just wanted to share this gem from today’s NYT (free for CUNY folk: sign up via Library):

Opinion | Larry David, Philosopher King

Larry David’s long-running show was hilarious, but it also revolved around a complex view of modern philosophy.

Numerous authors and texts that we’ve read together are either name-checked (Freud, Nietzsche) or resonate with the analysis of Larry David’s humor (Althusser’s theory that “ideology has a material existence” is proved, time and time again, by the show’s display of unspoken, and highly ideological, norms that are conveyed through bodily behavior rather than words).

Pretty pretty pretty pretty good.

On another note, I’m so impressed by the quality of your recent posts on Freud’s fetishism, Lacan’s mirror stage, and Mulvey’s feminist theory of cinema. So many of you are moving beyond “getting it” (which is already a high bar) and thinking about applications (Irianna’s exploration of Shelley’s Frankenstein via Lacan; Emma’s arguments about the “cool girl trope” and Mulvey; Gabi and Leonee’s discussions of Marilyn Monroe and cinema; and Stevie’s comparison of mainstream cinematic fetishism/mirroring to Chantal Ackerman’s experimental feminist cinema ) and extensions or critical push-backs (Shounak’s and Roddy’s reading of “fetishism”).

I could easily have linked to 4 or 5 other excellent posts. I’m really happy to see you reading and writing and thinking at such a high level! Read each other’s stuff when you can!

Freud’s exploration of fetishism offers a fascinating glimpse into the complexities of human psychology, particularly in the realm of desire and neurosis. In his essay on “Fetishism,” Freud delves into the meanings of fetishes for both the person who has it and his analyst, the relationship of fetishism to neurosis, and the underlying psychological mechanisms at play.

To the person who has a fetish, it holds a deeply personal and often symbolic significance. It serves as a source of comfort, a talisman against anxiety, or a means of connecting to a desired object or person. For the analyst, the fetish represents a manifestation of unconscious desires and conflicts, offering insight into the individual’s psyche and underlying neurosis.

Freud sees fetishism as closely related to neurosis, viewing it as a form of psychic defense mechanism. He suggests that fetishes arise as a way to resolve the Oedipus complex, particularly the castration anxiety experienced by young boys. By fetishizing an object associated with the mother’s body, such as a shoe or piece of clothing, the individual attempts to deny the castration threat and maintain a sense of wholeness.

According to Freud, every fetish ultimately signifies the absence of the penis in women, symbolizing the castration anxiety that underlies male fetishism. The fetish serves as a substitute for the missing penis, providing a sense of security and pleasure. However, Freud notes that this solution is fragile, as it relies on the individual’s ability to maintain the illusion of the fetish’s power.

The fetish incites such a powerful desire because it represents a fantasy of control over anxiety-provoking thoughts and feelings. By investing the fetish object with symbolic meaning, the individual seeks to master their fears and desires, albeit temporarily.

Freud encounters several barriers in his analysis of fetishism, including the resistance of the fetishist to explore the underlying meaning of their fetish. He expresses hesitation in confronting the taboo nature of fetishism and the uncomfortable truths it reveals about human sexuality and desire.

Freud explores the divided attitude of the fetishist through examples that illustrate the ambivalent nature of fetishism. The fetishist simultaneously desires and disavows the fetishized object, maintaining a complex relationship of attraction and denial. Freud analyzes the way the fetishist treats the fetishized object as a means of managing this ambivalence, often engaging in rituals or behaviors that reinforce the fetish’s significance.

In conclusion, Freud’s examination of fetishism sheds light on the intricate interplay between desire, anxiety, and neurosis. The fetish serves as a fascinating case study in the ways individuals navigate their innermost conflicts and desires, highlighting the complexities of human psychology.

The ‘gaze’ , like many a critical theory terminology , has entered the modern lexicon being used by all sorts of camps to explain or vilify some group. I myself have probably been guilty of misusing or misinterpreting “the gaze”. That’s why it was so refreshing to go back to where the term originates from. Mulvey applies psychoanalysis to cinema, specifically using Lacan’s mirror stage and the imaginary, to observe the way by which the screen has the simultaneous power  of subject formation and scopophilia. She formulates this by first pointing at the spectator and quite evidently pointing out that the spectator is not just a spectator. The man at the cinema is not simply like a people watcher at a park or an audience member at a sports game. Even through the protests of the more ashamed men in the audience, Mulvey thinks we should be skeptical to believe men when they say “I watch it for the story”. What is the spectator than, or the audience member ? Well he is a voyager, a person who takes pleasure in looking and controlling with that look. Ultimately, isn’t that what cinema and cinematic technologies so optimally revolutionized ? The peek through the curtains, looking at those who do not know that they are being looked at. The psychoanalytic dimension of course comes when Mulvey identifies two modes  by which scopophilia takes. The active scopophilia pertains to the formation of the objectified other, by the very conditions cinema produces (i.e. the pitch black theater and blaring screen) . The second is the narcissistic dimension, by which in a Lacanian frame work, when we look upon the screen we see our idealized egos. This happens in the form of the male protagonist, or just any character that can be inhabited, idealized.  The content of the actual character, in my interpretation, does not matter, ultimately characters within films usually are just vehicles for the audience. Take the protagonist from The Forty Year Old Virgin , of course he is far from a James Bond or Tony Montana, yet what matters is the projection of the audience onto him.

The two contradictory things happening, the desire to watch ,pleasurably without consent and inhibited ,and the desire to be recognized by the object being watched  , are seemingly irreconcilable.Yet film in all it’s sneaky hyperreal techniques miraculously pulls it off. The ultimate point of the ‘gaze’ is that as the power of film is so totalizing, one doesn’t even recognize what’s happening when you watch any blockbuster or any movie in general. The only way one can seemingly have what he wants is to inhabit the characters in a film, and so the object will be mine, but I cannot get too close less the illusion shatter. Cinema is finely balanced between the illusive and attainable. What Mulvey then goes onto display is something , I see all the time. Mulvey explains how  the female figure in a film is symbolic of the fear of castration, of ‘sexual difference’. The negation of pleasure is ultimately what a female figure is. Almost paradoxically the object of pleasure, is what threatens it’s undoing. This is why fetishism and sadism are the two avenues by which this anxiety is stimulated. Sadism comes in the form of law, of a sort casual end, requiring narrative. To take pleasure in the active negation of the objectified other is what the sadist enjoys. This is why the trope of the ‘femme fatale’ more usually than not ends in tragedy , the fun stops when the anxiety is gone. The fetishistic scopophilia turns the gaze itself into the drive, taking the objectified other and transforming it into somethings pleasurable in of itself.

The mirror has always been associated as a special object. We like mirrors because it is the only way we can see ourselves at. Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage” dives deeper into why and how the mirror works with the idea of the self, as usual, rising from roots of our infancy.

During the 8-16 months, infants are very attracted to mirrors. The minute they lay eyes on it they become so immersed and excited. I’ve seen this happen with little infants who would scream at you if you yank the mirror away from them. Lacan gives a very interesting theory why. When a child looks at a mirror, they are drawn to the image produced, which is just a reflection of themselves. At first, one might think that that’s why they are so drawn because of the revelation of, “That’s me!” But Lacan says its not like this, rather, what the child interprets of this reflection is “I want to be that”. As he goes to explain, the image  “this form is certainly more constituent than constituted, but in which it appears to him above all in contrasting size that fixes it and in a symmetry that inverts it, in contrast with the turbulence movements that subject feels are animating him,” (1113). In other words, that image is not the wild, uncontrollable child, they are the idealized individual, the perfect controlled person the child wishes they could be; thus, Lacan calls this image as the Ideal-I. It is what we strive to be yet, we would reach.

He further refers this identification as a misrecognition as the infants misunderstands that this is the ideal self rather that this is just their reflection. I first wondered why this wasn’t obvious, but then I forgot that this happens to infants. A infant won’t understand that’s them in the mirror. As he explains, the mirror stage and misrecognition leaves after language is learned because then, we can begin to recognize the truth and start to form our identity based on the symbolic system of language (1112). Even so, we don’t completely leave out of this stage. As I mentioned in the beginning, the mirror is literally the only way we can see ourselves. There is not one person that doesn’t stop to look at themselves in the mirror and more commonly, right before heading outside. We look at the mirror to see if our face looks good, how our body shape is, hair, outfit, etc. All in all, we keep judging ourselves based on the image there and keep trying to fix ourselves towards perfection. The mirror stage is a interesting concept when it comes to understanding how we perceive ourselves and how that image motivates us to reach towards the “other”. No matter what time period or age, we would still use the mirror and idealize that the image is the better version of ourselves and so, the person we want to be.

Side Note: When I read this piece for the first time, it reminded me of  Cooley’s social theory on the Looking Glass Self. I might be getting this wrong (this was back in SOC 101) but what I understood, this theory is a little alike to the mirror stage with the Ideal-I becoming more based on society and so, we reach towards, like wanting to be the ideal, to building identity based on what we think society sees us as.  

In Laura Mulvey’s essay of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she coined the term “male gaze” which delves into the male centered spectacles cinema has historically revolved around, reinforcing the real life power dynamics between the sexes. For deeper analysis, Mulvey refers to Sigmund Freud with the usage of her term scopophilia, “..(pleasure in looking)…pleasure in being looked at” (1957). 

Cinema ultimately runs on scopophilia, whether through the actual act of going to the cinema itself where the dark environment and the large screen engulfs you in entertainment or through the actual plot and filmmaking itself. 

Mulvey suggests that cinema has historically invited viewers to adapt the film narrative through a voyeuristic lens, where female characters symbolize the “pleasure in looking”, as the sexual object of lust. Ironically, this lust focused movements of the camera which seems to have held filmmakers on a chokehold is ultimately unproductive as Mulvey writes, “…her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (1959). 

Yet, this rigid standard of seuxalized roles female actresses are made to play on screen has prevailed. Scopophilia proves so powerful that it trumps the actual story-telling element. 

As a frequent enjoyer of movies, I’ve seen the spectacle of the male gaze continue to manifest itself in various different tropes of female characters even in the modern day liberal world, way past Mulvey’s publication of said essay. One such trope that particularly stands out to me is the “cool girl” trope. The Cool Girl is often seen as the mirrored image of masculinity in her interests and attitudes while still upholding the utmost sex appeal. To quote character Amy Dunne from Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl, “Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer…and jams hot dogs and hamburgers in her mouth…while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot” (Chapter 1). To me, the trope of the Cool Girl is almost this peculiar attempt to amalgamate the two modes of scopophilic looking…just almost. 

As Mulvey explains the first mode is the male audience lustfully examining the female object of desire. She only exists within this criteria, her power and sense of governess is ultimately lost within the voyeurism. Whereas the second is the male audience identifying the male ego-ideal. The male on male recognition and in return, idolization, inhibits scopophilia in the sense that the cool male lead may often be built up to be dominant, assertive, and successful, reflecting traditional ideals of what it means to be a man. The male viewer is unable to escape these two modes as it is cyclic (the cool male lead, through the ropes of his success, is often depicted as taming and domesticating, or at least being the direct recipient of the female object of lust). 

But the Cool Girl, even when given the interests and attitudes of the traditional man, can never intercross into the second category of male on male recognition. Their “coolness” only serves as an extension of their inherent objectification under the male gaze. Therefore, true complexity and depth of well-written female characters are rarely ever seen within the Cool Girl even when encapsulating all the “right” masculine traits. The scopophilia of the male looker’s identification of the male ego-ideal thus ultimately prevails over a female character attached with the same qualities.

“Not in favour of a reconstructed new pleasure, which cannot exist in the abstract, nor of intellectualised unpleasure, but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film.”

From a sculpture/painting of Nefertiti in 1330 B.C. Egypt to Marilyn Monroe’s command over a subway grate, beauty standards are latched onto us by force and esteem. The pedestal we silently, unconsciously, align to is a titan to contradict without sounding as though one bears the brunt of judgement. But the hallmark for that model can cite back to cartoons of rabbits who swoon with their hearts throbbing 3 feet from their chest. iTs a collective articulation by or for the male gaze. The process of objectification is sourced in essays written by Sigmund Freud. He divulges the connection of objectifications with primal instincts of scopophilia in early stages of environment/selfhood awareness. “Although the instinct is modified by other factors, in particular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as the basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object.”

Objectification of humans as a theory does not make as much sense as an initial thought, but one that sits perfectly in retrospect. From the Marxist dissection of man & commodity, third wave feminism, “objectification of humans” philosophizes, psychoanalyzes exactly how/why society has created such unpardonable inequality. The treatment, when faced with scorching indifference from a public aware of it, can be excavated down to the subconscious of how they are collectively taught to see in the modern age. A wild guess, but World Wars might link to media. Posters of propaganda, narratives from flowery writers that flourish the wining vision of an empire. Then to 20th century ubiquity, the movie is the energy for an audience. The influence of a movie is forcing its substance into deconstruction. Who can deny the allure of a panning shot of Brad Pitt fixing a car? Most people can identify its origin, as Mulvey cites the boundless cycle of wanting to emulate the active male while attaining the environment the lead actor commands, but what of its effect? The theory behind their essay investigates the psychological concoctions behind “movie magic”. “Scale, space, stories are all anthropomorphic..Here, curiosity and the wish to look inter­ mingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition:” Its undeniable the aim behind years of cinema has been to normalize the woman as the paradoxical clash between risk & gratification. I do believe the male gaze has morphed in the last few decades to be beyond gender and more centered on hierarchical, normative ideals. 

Women in cinema were always portrayed as a love interest or an object of the leading man’s desires. Women were typically given roles to portray a sexy young woman who acts as a temptation for male characters or simply serve as eye candy for the audience. A prime example of this is the iconic Marilyn Monroe. Historically in cinema women have existed to make the leading male protagonist look good and add to his character by essentially acting as a trophy and emphasizing his masculinity.  Mulvey adds to this and declares that another way women are illustrated as inferior to men is through the phallocentric system. To suggests that women are envious of men because we lack a penis is blasphemous and uncredited. Especially considering that men feel threatened by us women for the very same reason, so much so that they must try to control or save us to make themselves feel better. This calls into question, who is really the superior sex if women inspire fear in men. However, in recent media these portrayals of women are adopted and continue to be carried on like a tradition. In 2022, the reality star Kim Kardashian wore the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress to the MET Gala which is an event where women basically compete to have the best look and all eyes on them. Another example of this culture shining through is a game of family feud. The question was Why might someone not be casted as a lifeguard? Answers varied from the actor being too old to not having the ideal body. Hollywood has kept this concept alive for decades. Mulvey relates scopophilia to Lacan’s Mirror Stage. Mulvey explains Lacan’s idea of recognition and misrecognition. Applying this to the cinema, “… demands identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator’s fascination with and recognition of his like” (1958). This is a function of desires rooted from the ego. Essentially, the ego and sexual desires have found a common ground to produce fantasy for men as their repressed impulses are projected onto the performers. This projection allows the spectator to experience a sense of control and satisfaction through the protagonist’s actions as if they were performing the acts themselves. The characteristics of a male actor are seen as representing an idealized version of the self, rather than simply serving as an object of erotic gaze. 

Throughout the article focuses on scopophilia, and the pleasure men obtain from viewing and essentially objectifying women. The gaze on women is both pleasurable and threatening. The females lack of a penis ignites a fear of castration in men. “For this reason, the controlling male ego must attempt to escape the threat of castration evoked by the very gaze that gives it pleasure.” The attempts to regain control and combat fear involve voyeurism by demystifying her and either criticizing or saving her. Another tactic is to provide a substitute for the object of the fetish with something less frightening and more assuring. Overall, the focus on women is centered on how they make the men feel and what they inspire the men to do. The woman herself is insignificant on her own. Her purpose is to embody a sexually suggestive item and be visually appealing to either the characters or the audience.  

Overall, Mulvey discusses the significance of images in shaping the imaginary realm, recognition, misrecognition, identification, and the formation of subjectivity. It explores how the visual experience, particularly in cinema, plays a crucial role in the development of self-awareness and the relationship between image and self-image. The text also delves into the idea of the cinema as a space that allows for both temporary loss of ego and reinforcement of ego, as well as the production of ego ideals through the star system. It highlights the complex interplay between image, self-image, and ego in the cinematic experience. This stems from the female form as it poses a complex issue represented by the absence of a penis, suggesting a fear of castration. Womanhood is fundamentally defined by the lack of a penis, which is essential for establishing the castration complex and the symbolic order. Women are viewed as objects for male gaze and pleasure, inherently evoke unease due to their symbolic importance. The male subconscious deals with castration fears by either intensely scrutinizing women or idealizing them to ease anxieties about castration. This contrast is evident in film themes and the adoration of female celebrities.