Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative

The reflection questions can be found on the last slide. Reflection question tips are on the second-to-last slide. Please click through from the beginning

Questions

Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” introduced the term “male gaze” to academic and popular discourse. What does this term mean to Mulvey? If you’ve encounter the term before, does Mulvey’s work expand or complicate your understanding of the male gaze as a concept? If helpful, use an example from contemporary popular media to complete your answer.

Part of Mulvey’s goal in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is to inspire alternative modes of filmmaking: “the trill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outward or oppressive forms, or daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire” (344). In your opinion, does Hustlers model alternatives to the dominant mode of filmmaking Mulvey critiques?