Mulvey Scopophilia

Laura Mulvey, looked at film as something that fascinates us, it engages this us on an emotional level. So Mulvey coined the phrase the "male gaze" (in her 1973 essay called "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema") meaning that films and literature present a way in which women are seen from a masculine point of view, objectifying them to capture the pleasure of  male audiences. As Mulveys theory suggests that films are made from a heterosexual male point of view, women can only watch films from a secondary point of view until they start watching films from the perspective of men which lead them to start looking at themselves through the male gaze, which leads women to start objectifying other women. She points out that the roles females have in films are not important and are only there for something to look at, the women in films because of the male gaze cannot be better or more powerful or complete than the malesand thus placed in sexually degrading roles, an example of this is women are mainly placed as nurses not doctors, or weak and constantly needing a man not independent as opposed to males who are strong and in control of the events of a film. Mulvey also looks at Scopophilia which means "Pleasure in looking", this term originally comes from Freud. Movie making and watching movies both involve watching the film, when we are watching a film in the cinema, we are sitting in a dark room, to focus on the action on screen, of characters who don't know they are being watched. Mulvey has said "men are active, independent and in control of their own destinies while women have the role to satisfy the male gaze"