Whilethe construction of women in modern horror is organized around male dread of the female body, the peculiar subgenre of raperevenge horror literalizes castration anxiety by featuring- a heroine who avenges sexual trauma by neutering her male tormentors ( I Spit on Your Grave [Zarchi, 1978], Ms. 45 Tags: Abbas Kiarostam, Angst essen Seele auf, Citizen Kane, Death 24x a Second, Douglas Sirk, Duel in the Sun, Feminism, Feminist Film Theory, fetishism, Fetishism and Curiosity, Film Theory, Imitation of Life, King Vidor, Laura Mulvey, Laura Mulvey Male Gaze Theory, Laura Mulvey Theory, Literary Theory, Lorraine Gamman, Male Gaze, Male Gaze Films, Male Gaze Theory, Mark Lewis, Merja Makinen, Michele Aaron, Morocco, Peter Wollen, Psychoanalysis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, scopophilia, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, Visual and Other Pleasures, voyeurism, Xala, Miss World competition held in Londons Royal Albert Hall in 1970, Lesbian Film Theory and Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Homi K Bhabha and Film Thoery Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy, Photography and Film Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Modernism, Postmodernism and Film Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Third (World) Cinema and Film Theory Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Psychoanalysis and the Cinema Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Body Language in Harold Pinters Plays Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Jacques Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play, Analysis of Virginia Woolf's A Room of Ones Own, Analysis of Alexander Popes An Essay on Criticism. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. [2] Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz used psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema. Everything about Madeleines appearance in these two moments connote[s] to-be-looked-at-ness. On a first viewing, it appears as though Madeleines character is very limited, for she is viewed entirely from Scotties love struck perspective. Webism (1927; 1940). He was very much a feminist. (65), This definition refers back to the topic of scopophilia, but escalates it to a level of fetishism, which presentsan obsession with the female form that goes beyond the normal, socially acceptable erotic interest. Gamman, L. (1988). Midge has been there all along, but Scottie became so obsessed with his projection of perfection onto Madeleine that he failed to realize it. n. the fear of suffering an injury or loss of the genitals. Mulveys essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema(1975) has had a major impact on the course of film scholarship. (Ibid. After this episode occurs with the portrait, Midge clearly feels remorse for what she does, as she gets angry at herself as soon as Scottie has left. [8], Freud had a strongly critical view of circumcision, believing it to be a 'substitute for castration', and an 'expression of submission to the father's will'. Vertigos female leads, Marjorie Midge Woods (Barbara Bel Geddes) and Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton (Kim Novak), have the potential to turn the preconceptions of their society on their heads. Thus these forms of pleasure cannot be encompassed within our definition of fetishism. She addressed many of her critics, and clarified many of her points, in "Afterthoughts" (which also appears in the Visual and Other Pleasures collection). I agree that Midge leaves the story line because her common sense character isnt congruent to the insanity of Scotty. This concept was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and it refers to the pleasure gained from looking as well as to the pleasure gained from being looked at,[4] two fundamental human drives in Freuds view.