In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultanously looked at and
‘ In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness’ Discuss Mulvey’s assertion with reference to the operations of Hollywood cinema. ... Women are still looked upon for their psychical looks (sexually). ... 1975), and how Hollywood’s cinema past and present uses the ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ and creates visual pleasure, through the camera, audience and the characters within the film world, all those components intersect to produce a viewing a position that is male. ... J, Cultural theory and popular culture, page 144) She takes the construction of women in a sexist culture and explains about the exploitation of women in the cinema industry. It is true to believe that women were and are treated as an ‘object of male desire’ (Storey. ... One main impact of watching films is scopophilia, which can become a fixation in which people get this fixation for men and women getting a pleasure of looking. ... 1975) Although films were able to create the ‘male gaze’ and an ‘object of male desire’ men look at women, women look at women so it’s only psychoanalysis that can explain why the tradition of the active male and the passive female are produced in film. Women in more recent films are seen as active and the protagonist, yet they’re still seen as a sexual object. Take for example the Western films, the classic western where the women are seen and not heard, very pretty and glamorous, you have the conventional morally loose saloon bar girl and the good school teacher but in the post- modern westerns you have loud mouth women who stand up for themselves.