From: Anna Biller (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2007 - 15:53:03 PST
I see what you're saying. All the same, it was a fascinating topic
for her to go into, it was red-hot and it still resonates now. Why is
that? I completely agree that women may have visual pleasure, and
also that men may share a similar gaze. But her bringing it up made
so many people crazy, because there was something to it. As I
understand it, she went back later and took back some of what she
said, going back into classic women's melodramas for example, and
finding pleasure there. I don't think she was against pleasure, just
that she was missing pleasure that was created for HER, and not
pleasure created for someone else that she was also allowed to enjoy
as a bystander or a masochist.
On Jan 18, 2007, at 3:12 PM, Jack Sargeant wrote:
> sorry, my point was that this theory uses psychoanalysis, which
> posits presence of the phallus / vagina as castration and active /
> passive as real internal constructs (not social), i don't believe
> in psychoanalysis (although i enjoy reading Freud). when mulvey
> talks about men watching films she talks about castration and
> sadism and vouyerism and so on, not about the kind of political
> situation where men have more access to political power (which, i
> agree they do and yes i think that's wrong).
>
> mulvey - to my knowledge - wasn't writing about the social-
> political culture that i think you are (below), rather i think she
> was writing about watching movies (i don't mean that to sound
> sarcastic, i mean, literally i don't think she thought beyond that
> into say abortion rights or whatever which i remember being a big
> deal in 70s UK socialist feminism). now, to my way of thinking,
> contra mulvey, women may also have visual pleasure, men may not all
> share a similar gaze. moreover, why was she so against pleasure?
>
> jack
>
>
>>
>> In the 70's, much more than now, men really were the aggressors
>> and the lawmakers. It wasn't women feeling sorry for themselves or
>> trying to create a false duality of active/ passive in their own
>> minds or fantasies, it was a reality. It was such a time of women
>> as playthings, and this really depressed some women. Nowadays
>> there isn't this pressure on women to be sex objects, partly
>> because of the work done by the 70's feminists. So I've noticed
>> that young girls today are very fully sexualized for themselves,
>> they flirt and feel sexy and are outrageous, and they don't feel
>> threatened or subordinated by it but empowered. If anything it
>> intimidates the men! But it was not like that at all in the 70's,
>> and many women felt like they were drowning, drowning, and they
>> wanted to scream and flail and accuse and be aggressive themselves
>> to show how ugly it was. And I do think it worked.
>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.