Screen Cultures

Class #5: The Neon Demon

 Setting the scene (I)
• What is The Neon Demon (TND) [about]?
• What is “Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema” about?
– Can you identify Mulvey’s thesis statement and/or any of her
supporting arguments?
– Are there any critical concepts or terms that Mulvey deploys in
constructing – and arguing for – her analysis of mainstream
Hollywood cinema?
• How does TND reflect, address, challenge, and/or extend the
concerns raised by Mulvey?
 Setting the scene (II)
• How do film and television – as “advanced representation systems” –
make meaning? How is meaning conveyed?
• Quoting Mulvey: “The magic of the Hollywood style at its best …
arose, not exclusively, but in one important aspect, from its skilled and
satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure.”
• Re-re-wind: How does cinema manipulate – or, less pejoratively –
frame what we see on the screen?
– The position, angle, and movement of the camera
– Lighting, as well as the use of filters and lenses to produce color
– Composition
– Editing (specifically: the use of cuts to transition between sequences)
– Set design
– Special effects
– Make-up, hair, and costuming
– Performance
 “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey)
• Cinema is an advanced representation system; the
technological qualities of film production allow for more
complex forms of signification.
• Mulvey, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, seeks to explain
how (classic/mainstream) cinema serves the interests of the
patriarchy by showing how “the unconscious of patriarchal
society has structured film form.”
– Key quote: “[This paper] takes as starting point the way film
reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially
established interpretation of sexual difference which
controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle.”
• Ultimately, she wishes to destroy the existing mechanisms by
which the spectator derives (phallocentric) pleasure from
looking, in order to (re)appropriate film as a “political weapon.”
 Interlude: the mirror stage
• Our lives begin in the realm of the Real/the Imaginary, and we pass
through the mirror stage on the way to entering the Symbolic.
• The moment of (mis)recognition or “split” produces both a sense of
control (through recognition) and alienation (as the result of
misrecognition) as it negotiates this fundamental question of difference.
This sets the stage for “the future generation of identification with
others.”
• Crucially, both Freud’s and Lacan’s theories survive as metaphors – or
myths (and not as factual accounts) – that help explain how social
constructs and beliefs are culturally understood/maintained.
• According to Mulvey, the movie screen acts in a similar way by (a)
mimicking the process of ego formation and (b) supplying the (male)
spectator with images of women that need to be unpacked in the service
of the patriarchy.
• The language of film and the cinematic apparatus work in tandem to have
women function as the Other to the male Self (i.e. both the [male]
spectator and their idealized screen surrogate).
 “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (cont’d)
• At the core, the power of the cinema lies in the pleasure derived from looking,
or scopophilia (both active and narcissistic scopophilia).
• In a patriarchal society, this pleasure “has been split”: man looks, while
woman is (only) looked at. Woman’s cinematic representation accords to and
reinforces “her place [in society] as bearer of meaning, not maker of
meaning.”
• The (ideal/implied) spectator is forced to identify with the male protagonist
(his screen surrogate/ego) and adopts his male gaze. Female characters exist
as the erotic object of both.
– How is the spectator forced to identify with the male protagonist?
• While the protagonist is the subject of the narrative and drives the action, the
woman serves only as an (erotic) object – as spectacle – an object whose
sexual difference, which is most pronounced in the castration threat (her
lack), must somehow be contained/integrated into the narrative.
– What role(s) do female characters usually play according to Mulvey?
– What, in turn, characterize men’s representation in film?
 “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (end)
• The male unconscious has “two avenues of escape”: devaluation/voyeurism or
overvaluation/fetishistic scopophilia.
• Mulvey distinguishes between three looks: the look of the camera, the look of
the audience, and the look of the characters at each other.
– What is the relationship between these three looks? Why does it matter?
• According to Mulvey, only by “free[ing] the look of the camera ... and the look
of the audience into ... passionate detachment” can this spell be broken.
 Discussion/review questions
• What are some of the criticisms that could be levelled at Mulvey’s theory? Where
does her theoretical frame fall short, and how are its flaws related to the difference
between address and reception?
• Cite examples (i.e. scenes) from The Neon Demon that illustrate the concepts of
– scopophilia
– exhibitionism
– the male gaze
– to-be-looked-at-ness
– voyeurism
– fetishistic scopophilia
• In what way(s) do the male characters in TND function as (im)perfect stand-ins for
Mulvey’s (ideal/implied) spectator?
• Assess the feminist credentials of TND by tracing Jesse’s characterization and actions;
does she (re)present a challenge to Mulvey’s conceptualization of Hitchcock and/or
Sternberg’s female protagonists?
• What is TND ultimately about (i.e. who is the titular “neon demon”?), and how does
the plot directly speak to Mulvey’s concerns?
• In the final analysis, does TND critique the functioning of the male gaze or does it
knowingly participate in – and fall victim to – its trappings?
The cinematic apparatus
The male gaze
To-be-looked-at-ness/objectification
To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism (1)
To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism (2)
To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism + objectification
Exhibitionism
Fetishistic scopophilia
The female gaze
The female (gaze), punished
Scene analysis
 Teaser: gender, horror and the monstrous
• Dixit Laura Mulvey: “[Woman’s] alien presence then
has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative.”