Audiences and Audience Theory

-Suture
-Feminist film theory and audiences

Suture
-Classical Hollywood narrative and editing "sutures" or positions the audience in certain ways making only one preferred reading possible, however unconscious the audience is of that position.

Feminist Film Theory and Audiences
-Laura Mulvey
-Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

-Cinema reflects society
-Therefore cinema reflects a patriarchal society
-How does a patriarchal society manifest itself in cinema?

e.g.
-Patriarchy and phallocentrism are linked
-The phallus is the symbol of power
-Note how guns are used in films
-Guns = phallus = power

-The male mid-life crisis and phallocentrism
-The E-type Jaguar

The Gaze
-The "gaze" of the camera is the male "gaze"
-The male gaze is active, the female passive
-Within the narrative male characters direct their gaze towards female characters
-The spectator is made to identify with the male look, because the camera films from the optical, as well as libidinal, point of view of the male character
-Thus three levels of the cinematic gaze- camera, character and spectator- that objectify the female character (the triple gaze)
-Therefore the audience is constructed as though everyone was male
-Women are focused to look as though they were a male audience member

Agency
-In the classical Hollywood cinema the male protagonist has agency- he is active and powerful
-He is the agent around whom the dramatic action unfolds
- The female character is passive and powerless she is the object of desire for protagonist and audience

Erotic Desire
-Mulvey argues that women have roles in film:

1. As an object of erotic desire for the characters
2. As an object of erotic desire for the audience