If the world's a stage....

     Whatever one's walk of life may be, we are all spectators in one way or another. One might be walking down the street and be the witness of a car accident,  robbery, or some other unfortunate event. People have tendencies to stare at others all the time- especially at the bus stop, on buses, or any public place in general. For the sake of media, however, we are truly spectators in many ways. Film is a very important spectator's sport. Individuals go to the movies everyday. One person could see the same film that myself or a friend viewed, but have a different interpretation  (theories) of it. 

    

      A particular theory that I have recently learned about in Media Criticism class is a psychoanalytic one that has to do with film and cinema narratives. This theory revolves around the idea that there is much visual pleasure involved with the film media and the reasonings behind this claim. One main reason that is given to support the claim or idea that visual pleasure abound is that of the image of the castrated woman/ her absence of a penis. According to the studies of Freud and more recent studies from Lacan, there is a type of fetishism involved with the human psyche and this fetishism strongly suggests that society constructs the male structure and that it is a result of what's "missing" from the female anatomy (that they are "incomplete" by not having male genitalia).

      

    In all honesty, I was a little freaked out when I first heard about this theory, but after reading about it in Laura Mulvey's  article entitled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, and taking a look at various examples from well known films (such as Hitchcock's Vertigo, and Rear Window), my perspectives have been broadened a bit. For example, if one were to look at the movie Rear Window, one would see the trend of a the main character (Jeffries) being a spectator, a "peeping Tom", if you will. He had an interesting relationship with his girlfriend Lisa in the sense where when he was looking out of his apartment window and into her's, there is an aspect of eroticism, yet when the barrier is broken (when she enters his apartment), he sees what has really been going on in her living quarters; a dangerous man had been threatening her. He then saves his girlfriend from a harmful intruder. I found this to be interesting.