Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

An analogy is the comparison of two things that are not obviously similar. Mulvey’s argument hinges on the analogy she draws between the screen on which spectators view films and the mirror that, according to Lacan, precipitates subject-formation. After briefly summarizing Lacan’s notion that the young child’s first glimpse of himself in the mirror is a formative moment “of recognition/ misrecognition and identification, and hence the first articulation of the ‘I’ […]” (18), Mulvey compares this primary experience to film spectatorship: “Quite apart from the extraneous similarities between screen and mirror […], the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego” (18). Because films, like mirrors, are largely visual texts, they can convincingly reproduce the subject-forming mirror-moment and thereby reinforce the spectator’s ego even as the spectator identifies with the on-screen male hero.

Parrhesia is expressing one’s thoughts boldly and frankly in order to effect a change that one believes will benefit society. It is similar to constructive criticism, but the critic, in this case, is speaking out (or writing) from a disempowered position. While the term originated with the ancient Greeks (and can be translated as “saying it all”), Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures centered on the concept as recently as 1983.