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穆尔维:视觉快感与叙事电影

写于1973,将精神分析、电影理论、以及女性主义融合,指出“在她们传统的裸露癖角色中,女性既被观看又被展示,她们的外表为了强烈视觉与色情冲击而被编码,甚至可以说内涵是“待被看性”-- to-be-looked-at-ness。”

I序言

(A)对精神分析的一种政治性运用

本文旨在使用精神分析法,去揭示那些预先存在、并在个人主体和型塑它的社会构成之内发生作用的魅力模式,是在何处并怎样强化电影的魅力的。它把电影怎样反映、揭示,甚至利用那种直接的、社会地建构的对性别差异所做的阐释作为其出发点,正是这种阐释控制着各种形象、色情的观看(looking)方式和奇观(spectacle)。这有助于理解电影曾经是怎样的,电影的魔力在过去是怎样发挥作用的,与此同时,本文还尝试提出一种理论和实践,以挑战这种过去的电影。因此,精神分析理论在这里被挪用来作为一种政治武器,以便阐明父权社会的无意识怎样结构了电影的形态。

从其各方面的表现看来,菲勒斯中心主义(phallocentrism)的悖谬之处在于,它依靠被阉割的女性形象来赋予它的世界以秩序和意义。一种有关女性的看法构成了这一系统的关键:正是她的缺乏(lack)导致菲勒斯作为一种象征性的在场,正是她的欲望使得菲勒斯成为意指缺乏的好东西。近来,《银幕》杂志上有关精神分析与电影的文章未能充分说明在象征秩序(symbolicorder)中女性形态再现(representation)的重要性,而它最终谈及的,仅是这一秩序中的阉割而别无其它。可以简单地总结说:在父权制无意识的形成中,女人的作用是双重的,首先,由于她确实没有阳物而象征着阉割威胁,其次,由此她把自己的孩子也带入了这一象征界。一旦结果达成,她在这一过程中的意义也随之结束。她的意义不会持续到进入律法和语言的世界,除非是作为一种记忆,一种摆荡于母性的充足记忆和缺乏的记忆之间的记忆。这两种记忆均根植于本性(或者弗洛伊德著名用语中的解剖结构[anatomy])。女人的欲望从属于她作为流血伤口的承担者的形象,她只能存在于与阉割的关联中,却不能超越它。她把自己的孩子转变成她想拥有阳物的欲望的能指。(她设想,这就是进入象征界的条件)。她要么体面地屈从于那一命令:父和律法之名,要么,就得挣扎着把自己的孩子和她一起留在想象界的微光之中。因此,女人在父权文化中是作为男性的另一个能指,被象征秩序所约束,而男人在这一秩序中可以通过那强加于沉默的女人形象的言语命令生活于他的幻想和沉迷之外,而女人却依然被束缚在作为意义的承担者而不是制造者的位置。

对于女权主义者来说,这种分析具有显然的重要性,其美妙之处在于它对菲勒斯中心秩序下所经验的挫败做出的精确描绘。它使我们更加接近我们受压制的根源,并带来一种更加靠近问题的清晰度,它使我们面对最终的挑战:当仍然受困于父权制的语言中之时,怎样与像语言一样被结构的无意识(它确切地形成于语言出现的那一刻)展开斗争。我们没有办法从这苍天中造出另一种语言来,但是我们却可以通过对父权制和它所提供的工具的检测,首先开辟一条出路,在这方面,精神分析法不是唯一的但却是很重要的手段。因为那种与菲勒斯中心理论无甚相关的女性无意识,我们仍然被一条鸿沟隔离于重大问题之外:女婴的性化以及她和象征界的关系,作为非母亲的性成熟的女人,外在于菲勒斯意指功能的母性特质、阴道。但是,在这一点上,就现在的情况而言,精神分析理论至少可以促进我们对现状以及我们仍然身陷其中的父权秩序的理解。

 

(B)解构快感作为一激进的武器

 

作为一种先进的表征系统,电影提出了无意识(由主导秩序所形成)构成观看方式和观看快感的诸多问题。近几十年来,电影已经有了改变。它不再是以巨额的投资为基础的单一系统,其最佳典范就是三十年代、四十年代和五十年代的好莱坞。技术的进步(16毫米等)已经改变了电影生产的经济条件,它现在既可以是手工艺式的,也可以是资本主义式的。因此,这就为另类电影的发展提供了可能。无论好莱坞怎样试图变得具有自我意识和反讽意味,它始终把自己局限于一种反映电影主导意识形态观念的规范的场面调度之内。另类电影则为一种在政治和美学意义上均为激进的电影的诞生提供了空间,并且对主流电影的基本假设提出了挑战。这并非从伦理上拒绝主流电影,而是突显出主流电影的形式偏见如何反映了那种产生它的社会的心理沉迷(psychical obsessions),此外,它还强调,另类电影必须明确地着手反抗这些沉迷与偏见。一种政治上和美学上的先锋电影现在已经成为可能,但是它依然还只是作为一种对立物(counterpoint)而存在。

 

好莱坞风格(包括一切处于它的影响范围之内的电影)的魔力充其量上不过是来自它对视觉快感的那种技巧娴熟和令人满足的控制,这虽然不是唯一的,但却是一个重要的方面。无可争辩的是,主流电影把色情编码加入了主导的父权秩序语言之内。在高度发展的好莱坞电影中,只有通过这些编码,那些异化的主体——他想象的记忆被一种丧失感以及对幻想中潜在缺乏的恐惧撕裂——通过其形式之美和利用对自己造型的迷恋,才得以找到一丝满足。本文将讨论交织于影片中的那种色情快感及其意义,尤其是女性形象的中心地位。据说,对快感或美进行分析,就等于毁掉它。这正是本文的意图。那迄今仍代表着电影历史制高点的自我满足和强化,必须受到攻击。这并不是主张重新建构一种新的快感,它无法存在于抽象之中,也不是为了把不愉快理性化,而是要为彻底否定叙事性虚构影片的安逸和充足开辟一条道路。另类电影给人的震撼来自于把过去抛在后面,却并不拒绝它,它超越了陈旧或压制性的形式,或者敢于和常规的快感期待断绝关系,从而孕育出一种关于欲望的新语言。

 

II观看的快感/对人形的着迷

 

A电影提供诸多可能的快感。其一是窥淫癖(scopophilia)。在某些情况下,观看本身就是快感之源,正如相反的情形,被观看也有一种快感。最初,在《性欲三论》中,弗洛伊德把那种作为完全独立于动欲区(erotogenic zones)的驱力(drives)而存在的窥淫癖分解出来,作为性本能的成分之一。在这一点上,他把窥淫癖与作为客体的他人联系起来,使他们从属于一种控制性的和好奇的凝视(gaze)之下。他举出的特定例子都集中于儿童的窥视活动,集中于他们想要观看和弄清私处以及被禁看的东西的欲望(对他人的生殖器官和身体机能的好奇,对阳物存在和缺乏以及对原始场景回溯性的好奇)。在这种分析中,窥淫癖本质上是积极的。(后来,弗洛伊德在《本能及其变迁》一文中进一步发展了他的窥淫癖理论,认为它最早属于前生殖器时期的自淫,此后,观看的快感就按类比原则转移到他人身上。在主动的本能及其进一步发展出的自恋形式之间,存在一种与此相关的密切作用。)虽然本能被其他许多因素,尤其是被自我构成这一因素所修正,但它却是作为以他人为观看对象获取得快感的色欲基础的持续存在。发展到极端,它能固置为一种倒错,造成强迫性的窥淫者(voyeurs)和偷窥者(Peeping Toms)1,他们唯一的性满足,从主动的控制性的意义上说,只能来自于观看一个被对象化的他者。

 

乍一看,电影似乎与疏离于对一个无知觉的和不情愿的牺牲者进行暗中观察的隐秘世界。在银幕上所看到的是那么明显地被展现出来。但是绝大多数主流电影,以及其中有意发展出的成规,都描绘了一个极度封闭的世界,它无视观众的存在,而是魔法般地展开,为他们创造一种隔离感,并激发他们的窥淫幻想。此外,观影厅的黑暗(它也把观众们彼此隔绝)和银幕上移动的光影图案的亮丽之间的极端对比,也有助于促进各自窥淫的幻觉。虽然影片确实是放映出来给人看的,但是放映的条件和叙事的成规却给观众一种观看隐秘世界的幻觉。除此之外,观众在电影院中的情形俨然是裸露癖受到压抑,并且要把这种被压抑的欲望投射给银幕上的表演者的情形之一。

 

B电影满足一种追求观看快感的原始愿望,但它还进一步发展了窥淫癖自恋的一面。主流电影的成规将注意力聚焦于人的形体上。景别、空间、故事全都是神人同形同性论的(anthropomorphic)。在这里,观看的渴念和愿望与一种对相似和认知的沉迷混杂在一起:人脸、人体,人形与其周围环境之间的关系,人在世界中的可见的存在。雅克•拉康曾描述说,一个孩子从镜子里认出自己形象的那一刻,对于自我的形成是多么的关键。这一分析的若干方面在这里是有关联的。镜像阶段发生于孩子的肉体野心要超越他的原动力(motor capacity)的时期,其结果是,他认出自己时所感受到的愉悦,是出于他想象他的镜像要比他所体验到的自己的身体更完全、更完美。于是,认知和误认重叠了:被认出的形象被设想为自身被否定的身体,但是误认却优先地把这个身体作为一个理想自我投射到自身之外,那一理想自我乃是一异化的主体,它作为自我理想又被重新摄取,引发认同他者(others)的未来阶段。这一镜像时刻居于孩子的语言能力之先。

 

对于本文来说,重要的是这样一个事实,亦即是一个影像构成了想象界的基质,构成了认知/误认和认同的基质,以及由此构成了“我”和主观性的第一次发声(articulation)的基质。这就是较早的对观看的着迷(明显的例子是看母亲的脸)与原初的自我意识的模糊观念之间产生冲突的时刻。因而,就诞生了在形象与自我形象之间那种漫长的爱恋/失望,这在电影中得到了强烈的表现,并且引发电影观众愉快的认知。完全不同于银幕与镜子之间外在的类同(例如,把人形框在它周围的环境中),电影对魅力的结构强大到足以造成自我的暂时丧失,而同时却又在强化着自我。自我最终感知到的那种忘记了世界的感觉(我忘记我是谁,我在哪里),是形象认知的那种前主体化时刻的怀旧式回想。同时,电影在创造自我理想方面的特点尤其体现在它的明星制度之中,当明星们在施行相似与差异的复杂程序时(妖魅的人扮演着普通人),他们既是银幕现场的中心,又是银幕故事的中心。

 

C第二部分的A小节和B小节阐述了传统的电影情境中观看的快感结构的两个相互矛盾的方面。其一,窥淫癖,是来自于通过视觉而使用另一个人作为性刺激的对象所获得的快感。其二,是通过自恋和自我的构成发展起来的、它来自对所看到的影像的认同。因而,用电影术语来说,一个暗示着主体的性欲认同与银幕上的客体是分离的(积极的窥癖癖),另一个则通过观众对于类似他的人的着迷与认知来要求自我和银幕上的客体认同。第一个是性本能的作用,第二个是自我的力比多作用。这种二分法对弗洛德来说非常关键。虽然他把这两者看作是相互作用和相互交叠的,但在本能的内驱力和自卫之间存在的张力,从快感方面看,一直是一种戏剧性的两极分化。两者都是造型结构,是机制,而非含义。它们本身并没什么意义,它们必须附着于一种理想化的事物。两者所追求的目标都是对现实感知的漠不关心,并且激发出影响主体对世界的感知进而嘲弄经验之客观性的色情幻象。

 

在电影的历史中,它似乎已经发展出一种特殊的现实幻觉,力比多和自我之间的这种矛盾在其中找到了一个美丽而充足的幻想世界。在现实里,银幕的幻想世界从属于产制这一世界的律法。在构造欲望的象征秩序中,性的本能和认同过程具有一种含义。随着语言而诞生的欲望提供了超越本能和想象界的可能性,但是其参照点仍然不断地返回诞生它的创伤时刻,即阉割情结。因此,观看,这种存在于形式中的快感,在内容上可以具有威胁性,这正是作为表征/形象的女人对这一矛盾的具体化。

 

III、女人作为形象,男人作为看的承担者

A在一个由性的不平衡所安排的世界中,观看的快感在主动的/男性和被动的/女性之间发生分裂。决定性的男性凝视把它的幻想投射到照此风格化的女性形体上。在她们那传统的裸露癖角色中,女性同时被观看和被展示,她们的外貌为了强烈的视觉和色情冲击而被编码,从而能够把她们说成具有被观看性(to-be-looked-at-ness)的内涵。作为性欲对象被展示的女性是色情奇观的主导动机:从封面女郎到脱衣舞女郎,从齐格非(Ziegfeld)歌舞团2女郎到布斯比•伯克莱(Busby Berkeley)3歌舞剧的女郎,她承受观看,迎合并意指着男性的欲望。主流电影利索地整合着奇观与叙事。(但是请注意,在音乐片中大量的歌舞怎样中断了故事空间的流程。)在常规的叙事影片中,女性的在场是奇观中必不可少的因素,然而她的视觉化出现,往往会妨碍故事线索的发展,在色情注视的时刻,冻结动作的流程。于是,这一格格不入的在场必须被整合进叙事的内聚性动力之中。正如巴德•伯蒂彻(Budd Boetticher)4所说:

有价值的是女主人公所挑起的东西,或者不如说是她所代表的东西;她就是那个人,或者不如说是她在男主人公中所激发出的爱或恐惧,要不然就是他所感觉到的对她的关心,正是她驱使他那样做的。女人自身没有丝毫的重要性。

(叙事性影片中最近的趋势是完全地摒弃这一难题;此后,如莫利•哈斯克尔(Molly Haskell)5所说,“同志电影”的发展使得男性中心人物积极的同性恋色情主义可以不受干扰地把故事发展下去。)传统上,被展示的女人在两个层面上起作用:作为银幕故事中的人物的色情对象,以及作为观影厅内观众的色情对象;因此,在银幕两边的观看之间存在着不断变换的张力。例如,歌舞女郎的技法使这两种观看在技术上得到统一,而不会导致叙事空间出现任何明显的中断。一个女人在叙事故事中进行表演,观众的凝视和影片中男性人物的凝视就巧妙地结合起来,而不会破坏叙事的逼真性。因为在那一时刻,正在表演的女人的性冲击力把影片带入了它自己的时空以外的无人地区。玛丽莲•梦露在《永不回头的河流》6中的首次出场,以及劳伦•白考尔(Lauren Bacall)7在《逃亡》8中的歌唱就是这样。同样地,陈规俗套的腿部特写(例如,玛琳•黛德丽)或脸部特写(嘉宝)在叙事中则结合了另一种色情主义的模式。被分割的身体的局部破坏了文艺复兴的空间,破坏了叙事所要求的纵深幻觉,它给予银幕的是平面、切片或肖像画的性质,而不是逼真性。

B一种主动/被动的异性分工也同样控制着叙事的结构。根据主导的意识形态原则以及支持它的精神结构,男性人物不能承担性之客体化的负荷。男人不愿意凝视与他同类的裸露癖者。因此,奇观与叙事之间的分离,支持男性作为推动故事向前发展的角色,使得事件发生的主动者。男人控制着电影的幻想,在更深层的意义上还显现为权力的表征:作为观众的观看的承担者,把这观看转移到银幕上,从而使作为奇观的女人所再现的外叙事空间(extra-diegetic)的趋向变得中性化。这有可能通过围绕着一个观众能够认同的主控人物来结构影片的动作过程而实现。当观众与男主人公认同时,观众就把自己的观看投射于其同类身上,亦即他在银幕上的代理人,从而使男主人公对事态的控制权与色情观看的主动权相结合,这两者都提供了一种全能的满足感。因此,一个男明星的魅力特征(glamorous characteristics)显然不是凝视色欲客体的特征,而且是那些更为完全、更为有力的理想自我的特征,这种理想自我产生于镜子面前认知的原初时刻。故事中的人物能够比主体/观众更好地制造事件和控制事件,正如镜像更能控制原动力的协调(motor coordination)。与作为形象的女人相反,主动的男性人物(认同过程的自我理想)要求一个与镜像认知相符合的三维空间,在镜像认知中,异化的主体使得他自己的这一想象性存在的再现内在化。他是景观中的一个人物。在这里,影片的功能就是尽可能准确地再生产所谓人类感知的自然条件。摄影机技巧(尤其是深焦的例子)和摄影机运动(取决于主人公的动作),再加上不可见的剪辑(写实主义的要求),所有这些都趋向于模糊银幕空间的界限。男性主人公自由地掌控着舞台,这舞台是一种空间的幻觉,在那里,男性主人公链接观看,创造动作。

 

C1第三部分的A小节和B小节陈述了影片再现女性的模式和围绕叙事空间的成规之间存在着的一种紧张。每一种情形都和一种观看相联系:直接窥淫的观众的观看与供他享乐而被展示的女性形体相联系(暗含着男性的幻想),着迷于与他同类的形象的观众,其观看则进入到一种自然空间的幻觉,并通过那一人物控制和占有叙事空间中的女人。(这种紧张和从一极到另一极之间的变换可以建构一种单纯的文本。因此,在《唯有天使有翅膀》和《有与无》这两部影片中,其开端就是把一个女人作为观众和影片中所有男性主人公共同凝视的客体。她被孤立,妖魅迷人,被展示,被性感化。但是随着叙事的展开,她爱上了男主人公,成为他的财产,她就失去了那外在的妖魅特征,那普遍化的性感,和那歌舞女郎的内涵;她的情色欲念仅仅属于那个男明星。通过和男明星的认同,通过参与他的权力,观众也就能够间接地占有她。)

 

但是从精神分析的角度来看,女性人物提出了更深层次的问题。她还暗示着某些东西,视线虽然持续地环绕其上但却视而不见:她缺少阳物,这意味着一种阉割威胁,因而也就令人不快。从根本上说,女人的含义就是性的差异,她没有阳物,这在视觉上是可以确证的,这种物质证据就是阉割情结的基础,它对于组织化地进入象征秩序和父之律法是十分重要的。因此,作为图符被展示给男人——这些观看的主动控制者——用于凝视和享受的女人,始终威胁着要唤起它原初所意味的焦虑。男性无意识有两条路径避免这种阉割焦虑:专注于那原始创伤的重现(re-enactment)(探究那个女人,把她的神秘非神秘化),通过对有罪的对象的贬斥、惩罚或拯救来加以平衡(这一路径在“黑色影片”所关涉的东西中被典型化);或者以恋物对象作为替代,彻底否认阉割,或是把再现的人物本身转变为恋物,从而使它变得可靠而非危险(因此出现对于女明星的过高评价和偶像祟拜)。

 

  这第二条路径,恋物化的观看癖,塑造着对象的身体之美,将之转变为自身即可满足的某物。而第一条路径,窥淫癖,正好相反,它是和虐待狂联系着的:快感存在于对罪行的确定(立即与阉割联系起来),通过惩罚或宽恕来对有罪之人施加控制和征服。这种虐待狂的方面非常适合于叙事。虐待狂要求一个故事,它取决于要使某种事情发生,取决于迫使另一个人产生的变化,取决于有头有尾的线性时间之内一场意志和力量、胜利/失败的斗争。另一方面,恋物化的窥淫癖也可作为仅仅聚焦于观看的情欲本能,存在于线性时间之外。这些矛盾和模糊性可以通过希区柯克和斯登堡的作品更为简要地加以说明,他们两人在各自的诸多影片中都把观看几乎当成是内容或题材。希区柯克更为复杂,因为两种机制他都使用。另一方面,斯登堡的作品却提供了许多有关恋物化窥淫癖的纯粹例子。

C2众所周知,斯登堡曾经说过,他欢迎把他的影片上下颠倒来放映,以便使故事和其中的人物不至于干扰观众对银幕形象的纯粹欣赏。这一陈述既泄露了机密却又坦率真诚。其真诚之处在于他的影片的确要求女性人物(黛德丽,在由她主演的那一系列影片中,就是极端的例证)必须是可认同的。但是其泄漏机密之处在于,他强调了这样一个事实,即对他来说,与叙事或认同过程相比,由画框所框住的画面空间更加重要。希区柯克进入的是窥淫癖者的探究方面,而斯登堡却创造了最终的恋物,一直发展到为了使形象与观众发生直接的色情联系,宁肯中断男主人公的富于权力的观看(此即传统叙事影片中的特性)。作为客体的女性之美和银幕空间合而为一:她不再是罪行的承担者,而是一个完美的产品,她那由特写所分解的和风格化了的身体就是影片的内容,并且就是观众观看的直接担受者。

 

  斯登堡削弱银幕纵深的幻觉;他的银幕趋向于一维,如光影、花边、水蒸汽、树叶、网格、飘带等等,简化了视野。影片里没有或者很少有通过主要男主人公的眼睛进行观看的中介。相反,像《摩洛哥》中拉•贝谢尔这样的人物的影子般的出现,作为导演的替代,他们就脱离了观众的认同。尽管斯登堡坚持认为他的故事是无关紧要的,但它所具有的重要意义却在于,他的故事所关注的是情境而非悬念,是循环的而非线性的时间,并且情节的繁复之处围绕的是误解而非冲突。它缺乏的最重要的东西就是银幕场景中那控制性的男性凝视。在最典型的黛德丽影片中感情戏的高峰时刻,她那色情含义的重大瞬间,发生于她在虚构故事中所爱上的那个男人不在场之时。在银幕上有其他的目击者,其他的观众在看着她,他们的凝视和观众的凝视相一致,但却并未取代它们。在《摩洛哥》的结尾,汤姆•布朗已经消失在沙漠中之后,爱米•乔利才踢掉脚上的金拖鞋,尾随他而去。在《羞辱》(Dishonoured)的结尾,克拉瑙对玛格达的命运漠不关心。在这两个例子中,被死亡神圣化的情欲冲击是作为奇观展示给观众的。男主人公产生误解,但最重要的是,他没有看见。

与之相比,在希区柯克的影片中,男主人公并没有完全看到观众所看到的。然而,我在这里将要讨论的那几部影片中,他通过观看癖的色情主义把一种形象的魅力当成是影片的主题。此外,在这些例子中,男主人公表现了观众所体验到的矛盾和紧张。尤其是在《晕眩》中,不过,还有《艳贼》(Marnie)和《后窗》,观看是情节的中心,它摇摆于窥淫癖和恋物癖之间。作为一种花招,在进一步玩弄正常的观看过程时(从某种意义上这一过程揭示了这一花招),希区柯克运用了在正常情况下与意识形态的正确性相联系的认识过程,以及对既定的伦理道德的确认来表现倒错的一面。希区柯克从未隐瞒他对窥淫癖的兴趣,不论是电影的还是非电影的。他的男主人公是象征秩序和律法的楷模——一名警察(《晕眩》)、一个有钱有势的占支配地位的男性(《艳贼》)——但是他们的色情内驱力却把他们引入一种折衷的境地。驱使他人屈从于他的虐待狂式的意愿,或者屈从于他的窥淫癖式的凝视的力量,将女性转化成了这两者的对象。这种力量得到确凿无疑的合法权利和女人的既定罪行(按精神分析的说法,是激起阉割)的支持。真正的倒错仅由意识形态的正确性这一层薄薄的面纱所遮掩——男人处于合法的一边,女人处于不合法的一边。希区柯克对于认同过程的技巧的高超运用,以及对于男性主人公的摄影机主观视角的自如运用,把观众深深地拖入他的位置,使他们分享他那不自在的凝视。观众被吸纳进银幕场景和故事空间(嘲讽式地模仿观众在电影院中的处境)里的窥淫情境,这种情境模仿着他自己在电影院中的情形。

 

  在对《后窗》的分析中,杜舍(Douchet)9把这部影片看作是电影院的一个隐喻。杰弗里是观众,对面公寓楼中的事件则相当于银幕。当他观望时,一个色情的维度被加之于他的观看,一个核心的形象也被加之于这场戏剧。对他来说,他的女友丽莎极少有性的吸引力,只要她待在观看者一侧时,或多或少是个累赘。当她穿越过他的房间和对面公寓楼之间的障碍时,他们的关系在情欲上重生了。他不仅通过照相机镜头来观望她,把她当作远处的一个意味深长的形象,他还看把她看作一个犯罪的闯入者,被一个危险的男人发现,并威胁要惩罚她,因此,他最终要去拯救她。丽莎的裸露癖已经通过她对服装与样式以及对作为视觉上完美的被动形象的着迷而被建构出来;杰弗里的窥淫癖及行动也通过他作为一名摄影记者的工作、新闻故事的制造者和影像的捕捉者而建构出来。然而,他被迫的静止不动,把他像观众那样困在椅子里,使他完全处在电影院观众的幻想位置上。

在《晕眩》中,主观的摄影机占据着主导地位。除了从朱蒂的视角有一次闪回外,叙述全是围绕着司各迪看见或未曾看见的东西编织而成的。观众完全是从他的视角来跟随他那情欲沉迷的增长和最终的失败。司各迪的窥淫癖是很露骨的:他跟踪和监视一个女人,没有和她说过话,就爱上了她。他的虐待狂一面也同样是很露骨的:他选择当一名警察(而且是自由的选择,因为他曾经是一名成功的律师),甘心参与一切可能的追逐和调查。结果,他跟踪、监视并爱上了一个美丽而神秘的完美女性形象。他曾一度实际地和她面对面,他那情欲的内驱力想要把她整垮,并通过咄咄逼人的盘问来迫使她坦白。

在影片的后半部,他再次展现了对那个他喜欢悄悄监视的形象的着魔式纠缠。他把朱蒂改造为玛德琳,强迫她在每个细节上都遵从他那恋物的实质外貌。她的裸露癖、她的受虐狂使得她成为司各迪主动的虐待狂式窥淫癖最理想的被动的对手。她知道她的角色就是表演,只有彻底的表演和然后的一再重演,她才能维持住司各迪的色情兴趣。但是在重复扮演的过程中,他的确把她整垮了,并且成功地暴露了她的罪行。他的好奇心获得彻底的胜利,她则受到了惩罚。

然而,在《晕眩》中,观看的色情卷入是令人迷惑的:当叙事带着观众发展下去,并且用他自己正在施行的那些过程来把他缠住的时候,他的沉迷又掉转来对付他。从叙事角度来说,希区柯克的男主人公被牢固地安置在象征秩序之中。他具备父权制超自我的一切属性。因此,当观众被自己替身的外观合法性哄骗入一种虚假的安全感时,他通过自己的观看看见并发现了自己被暴露为共谋,于是观众就陷入了观看的道德双重性。《晕眩》绝不仅仅限于是对警察性倒错的一个旁白,它集中表现的是在性别差异方面主动/观看,被动/被观看的分裂,以及被封装在男主人公身上的男性象征的权力。玛尔妮也是在为马克•鲁特兰的凝视而表演,并装扮成完美的被观看的形象。他本来也是站在法律那一边的,直到——被对她的犯罪、她的秘密的着魔所牵引——他渴望看到她犯罪的行为,并使她坦白,然后拯救她。所以,当他在实施他的权力的蕴涵时,他也就成为了共谋犯。他控制着金钱和语言,他能两者兼得。

Ⅳ、总结

本文所讨论的精神分析的背景对于传统叙事影片所提供的快感和不快是有关联的。窥淫癖的本能(把别人作为色情客体观看的快感),以及与之相对,自我里比多(形成认同过程)起着这类电影所利用的塑型、机制的作用。女人的形象,作为供男人凝视(主动的)的原材料(被动的),把这一论证进一步带入表征的结构,增添了父权秩序的意识形态所要求的层次,这种意识形态正是在它所最喜爱的电影形式——幻觉的叙事影片中得到最佳的实现。这一论证又再次转向精神分析的背景,在那里,女人作为指称阉割的表征,诱导着窥淫癖的和恋物癖机制去避开她的威胁。这些相互作用的层次都不是电影所固有的,但它们唯有通过电影的形式才能传达出一种完善而又美丽的矛盾,这是由于电影具有转移观看重点的可能性。正是观看的地点界定了电影,以及改变它和暴露它的可能性。从它的窥淫潜能来说,正是这一点使电影大大不同于脱衣舞、戏院、歌舞演出等等。远远超过突显女人的被观看性,电影为女人的被观看建造了通往奇观本身的途径。利用作为控制时间维度的电影(剪辑、叙事)和作为控制空间维度的电影(距离的变化、剪辑)之间的张力,电影的编码创造出一种凝视、一个世界和一种客体,因而制造出一种按欲望度量剪裁的幻觉。正是必须打破这些电影编码及其与格式化的外部结构的关系,才能对主流电影和它所提供的快感提出挑战。

 

首先(也作为结束),窥淫—观看癖的注视是传统电影快感的关键部分,它本身也可以被打破。有三种不同的观看方式与电影有关:纪录具有电影性的事件时摄影机的观看,观看完成作品时观众的观看,以及在银幕幻觉内人物相互之间的观看。叙事电影的成规否认前两种,使它们从属于第三种,其有意的目的始终是消除摄影机的闯入,并防止观众产生间离的意识。不去掉这两者(纪录过程的物质存在,观众的评论性读解),虚构的戏剧就不能获得现实感、明确感和真实感。然而,正如本文所探讨的,在叙事性虚构影片中观看的结构在它的前提中包含着一种矛盾:作为阉割威胁的女性形象不断危及叙事空间的统一,并且作为干扰的、静态的、一维的恋物而闯入那幻觉的世界。因此从物质上出现在时间和空间中的两种观看,总是急迫地屈从于男性自我的神经病需要。摄影机成为制造文艺复兴空间幻觉的机制,它那流畅的运动是和人眼相适应的,这是对围绕着主体感知的意识形态的一种再现:摄影机的观看遭到否认,从而创造一个令人信服的世界,因而观众的替身可以在其中进行逼真的表演。同时,观众的观看也不被承认是一种内在的力量:一旦对女性形象的恋物癖式的再现威胁着要破坏幻觉的魔力,一旦银幕上的色情形象(不通过中介)直接显现给观众时,那物恋的事实——尽管它像阉割恐惧一样隐秘——就会冻结观众的观看,把观众定住,并阻止他和眼前的形象达成一定的距离。

 

观看的这种复杂的交互作用是电影所特有的。对传统电影成规坚如磐石的积累的第一个袭击(激进的电影制作者已经干起来了)就是要解放摄影机的观看,在时间和空间中进入它的物质性,就是要解放观众的观看,使之成为辩证的、感情超离的。无疑,这将破坏满足感、快感和“看不见的客人”的特权,以及凸现出电影怎样地依赖于窥淫癖的主动/被动的机制。形象继续被窃取并用于此目的的女性,除了感伤的遗憾,未能带着更多的想法,看到传统电影形式的衰落。

 

校译于2006.6.1-10BFA

 

注释:

1偷窥的汤姆,英国传说中的人物,系考文垂一裁缝,因偷看Lady Godiva裸体骑马过市而招致双目失明。(以下所有注释皆为校译者注)

2百老汇最著名的歌舞团之一,歌舞大王齐格菲创办。齐格菲年轻时是在杂耍节目中表演的艺人。1893年到百老汇发展,建立了以自己名字命名的歌舞团。1932年,他因操劳过度致死,而他的歌舞团也受到美国经济大萧条的影响而逐渐没落。

3好莱坞最负盛名的歌舞片导演之一。上世纪20年代末,歌舞片这种新兴的电影类型开始走下坡路,眼看就要成为电影史上最短命的片种。这时,华纳公司独领风骚,将联合公司的导演兼编舞巴斯比?伯克莱挖了过来。他随之成为了使歌舞片这一类型起死回生的头号功臣。伯克莱来自百老汇,逐渐在好莱坞成名。他的编舞观念极大地影响了30和40年代美国歌舞片的风貌。在1933年那部里程碑式的歌舞片《第42街》中,观众第一次在大银幕上真正领略了来自百老汇的完美舞蹈场面。在伯克莱的镜头中,在那些夸张的巨大的花卉、小提琴、甚至是瀑布的道具衬托下,那些漂亮而性感的舞蹈女郎尽情展现着她们美丽的角度,仿如一颗颗璀璨的珍珠,遂被称之为“珍珠女郎”。

4原名小奥斯卡•伯蒂彻。曾在卡尔佛军事学院和俄亥俄州立大学读书。三十年代去墨西哥,成为职业斗牛士。1941年任影片《碧血黄沙》的斗牛场面的技术顾问,此后便留在好莱坞做副导演。1944年任导演,拍摄的第一部影片是《一个神秘的夜晚》。其后又拍了一些低成本影片和B级片,如《凶手逍遥法外》、《记住七个人》等影片,这些影片既体现了他在处理惊险题材方面的才华,也都相当卖座。此后,为了给他的好友卡洛斯•阿鲁扎拍一部纪录片,他花了七年时间,在这期间,妻子同他离婚,钱也花光了,影片中的男主角阿鲁扎死于车祸,而他也几乎死于精神病院。1967年,他回到好莱坞,但好运还是没降临他头上,他影片的男主角又死于空难。此外,他还拍过电视片,如《达尔达尼安之剑》。

5美国电影批评家,所著的《从尊敬到强奸》已是女性主义电影批评名著。

6The River of No Return,又译《大江东去》,奥托•普雷明格(Otto Preminger)导演。拍摄于1954年。

7 1924年

出生于纽约,以冷漠的神情和性感低沉的嗓音在好莱坞独树一格。她在中学华业后接受过短期的戏剧训练,也在百老汇演出过小角色,后改行成为纽约的一名高级模特儿,她因一张封面照片被大导演霍华德•霍克斯的夫人发现而被引荐给丈夫。白考儿的第一部电影《逃亡》便跟当时的首席巨星合演,她特殊的风韵深深吸引了男主角亨佛莱•鲍嘉,两人于1945年结婚。婚后又合作多部叫好叫座的电影,他俩关系一直非常密切而亲爱。1967年鲍嘉因病去逝,白考儿守寡四年之后又嫁给演员小杰逊•罗巴滋,可惜维持不久,最后也以离婚收场。1970年代白考儿在银幕上的作品已大为减少。1980年代在百老汇的舞台演出颇为轰动,两度获得东尼奖。1996年以《越爱越美丽》获金球奖最佳女配角后,再度活跃于影视界。?

8 To have and have not,霍华德•霍克斯(Howard Hawks)导演,拍摄于1944年。劳伦•巴考尔初登银幕跟当时的红星汉弗莱•鲍嘉共结片缘的代表作,后来二人假戏真做变成夫妻。本片的风格近似《北非谍影》,故事背景是二次世界大战法国被德国纳粹占领时的马蒂尼岛,鲍嘉饰演一艘专门接待游客海钓的游艇船主,本来生活优悠,后来前往旅馆收账时遇到神秘性感的女扒手白考尔,顿时心猿意马。在一连串的事件发生之后,鲍嘉决定冒险将白考尔和法国地下分子运送到美国去。本片由海明威同名小说改编,另一著名小说家威廉•福克纳参与编剧。

9即Jean Douchet,法国《电影手册》影评人,著有《法国新浪潮》等,曾担任过导演和演员。

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VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey

Originally Published - Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp. 6-18

I. Introduction

A. A Political Use of Psychoanalysis

This paper intends to use psychoanalysis to discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject and the social formations that have moulded him. It 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. It is helpful to understand what the cinema has been, how its magic has worked in the past, while attempting a theory and a practice which will challenge this cinema of the past. Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriated here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form.

The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies. Recent writing in Screen about psychoanalysis and the cinema has not sufficiently brought out the importance of the representation of the female form in a symbolic order in which, in the last resort, it speaks castration and nothing else. To summarize briefly: the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold. She first symbolises the castration threat by her real absence of a penis, and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in the process is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack. Both are posited on nature (or on anatomy in Freud's famous phrase). Woman's desire is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound, she can exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns her child into the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis (the condition, she imagines, of entry into the symbolic). Either she must gracefully give way to the word, the Name of the Father and the Law, or else struggle to keep her child down with her in the half-light of the imaginary. Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.

There is an obvious interest in this analysis for feminists, a beauty in its exact rendering of the frustration experienced under the phallocentric order. It gets us nearer to the roots of our oppression, it brings an articulation of the problem closer, it faces us with the ultimate challenge: how to fight the unconscious structured like a language (formed critically at the moment of arrival of language) while still caught within the language of the patriarchy. There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides, of which psychoanalysis is not the only but an important one. We are still separated by a great gap from important issues for the female unconscious which are scarcely relevant to psychoanalytic theory: the sexing of the female infant and her relationship to the symbolic, the sexually mature woman as non-mother, maternity outside the signification of the phallus, the vagina.... But, at this point, psychoanalytic theory as it now stands can at least advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught.

B. Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon As an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking. Cinema has changed over the last few decades. It is no longer the monolithic system based on large capital investment exemplified at its best by Hollywood in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. Technological advances (16mm, etc) have changed the economic conditions of cinematic production, which can now be artisanal as well as capitalist. Thus it has been possible for an alternative cinema to develop. However self-conscious and ironic Hollywood managed to be, it always restricted itself to a formal mise-en-scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema. The alternative cinema provides a space for a cinema to be born which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film. This is not to reject the latter moralistically, but to highlight the ways in which its formal preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it, and, further, to stress that the alternative cinema must start specifically by reacting against these obsessions and assumptions. A politically and aesthetically avant-garde cinema is now possible, but it can still only exist as a counterpoint.

The magic of the Hollywood style at its best (and of all the cinema within its sphere of influence) arose, not exclusively, but in one important aspect, from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure. Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order. In the highly developed Hollywood cinema it was only through these codes that the alienated subject, torn in his imaginary memory by a sense of loss, by the terror of potential lack in phantasy, came near to finding a glimpse of satisfaction: through its formal beauty and its play on his own formative obsessions.

This article will discuss the interweaving of that erotic pleasure in film, its meaning, and in particular the central place of the image of woman. It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article. The satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the high point of film history hitherto must be attacked. Not in favour of a reconstructed new pleasure, which cannot exist in the abstract, nor of intellectualised unpleasure, but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film. The alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, or daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire.

II. Pleasure in Looking/Fascination with the Human Form

A. The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at. Originally. in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. His particular examples center around the voyeuristic activities of children, their desire to see and make sure of the private and the forbidden (curiosity about other people's genital and bodily functions, about the presence or absence of the penis and, retrospectively, about the primal scene). In this analysis scopophilia is essentially active. (Later, in Instincts and their Vicissitudes, Freud developed his theory of scopophilia further, attaching it initially to pre-genital auto-eroticism, after which the pleasure of the look is transferred to others by analogy. There is a close working here of the relationship between the active instinct and its further development in a narcissistic form.) Although the instinct is modified by other factors, in particular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms, whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other.

At first glance, the cinema would seem to be remote from the undercover world of the surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim. What is seen of the screen is so manifestly shown. But the mass of mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic phantasy. Moreover, the extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium (which also isolates the spectators from one another) and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation. Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world. Among other things, the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer.

B. The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form. Scale, space, stories are all anthropomorphic. Here, curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the person in the world. Jacques Lacan has described how the moment when a child recognises its own image in the mirror is crucial for the constitution of the ego. Several aspects of this analysis are relevant here. The mirror phase occurs at a time when the child's physical ambitions outstrip his motor capacity, with the result that his recognition of himself is joyous in that he imagines his mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than he experiences his own body. Recognition is thus overlaid with misrecognition: the image recognised is conceived as the reflected body of the self, but its misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself as an ideal ego, the alienated subject. which, re-introjected as an ego ideal, gives rise to the future generation of identification with others. This mirror-moment predates language for the child.

Important for this article is the fact that it is an image that constitutes the matrix of the imaginary, of recognition/misrecognition and identification, and hence of the first articulation of the 'I' of subjectivity. This is a moment when an older fascination with looking (at the mother's face, for an obvious example) collides with the initial inklings of self-awareness. Hence it is the birth of the long love affair/despair between image and self-image which has found such intensity of expression in film and such joyous recognition in the cinema audience. Quite apart from the extraneous similarities between screen and mirror (the framing of the human form in its surroundings, for instance), the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego. The sense of forgetting the world as the ego has subsequently come to perceive it (I forgot who I am and where I was) is nostagically reminiscent of that pre-subjective moment of image recognition. At the same time the cinema has distinguished itself in the pro- duction of ego ideals as expressed in particular in the star system, the stars centering both screen presence and screen story as they act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary).

C. Sections II. A and B have set out two contradictory aspects of the pleasurable structures of looking in the conventional cinematic situation. The first, scopophilic, arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen. Thus, in film terms, one implies a separation of the erotic identity of the subject from the object on the screen (active scopophilia), the other demands identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with and recognition of his like. The first is a function of the sexual instincts, the second of ego libido. This dichotomy was crucial for Freud. Although he saw the two as interacting and overlaying each other, the tension between instinctual drives and self-preservation continues to be a dramatic polarisation in terms of pleasure. Both are formative structures, mechanisms not meaning. In themselves they have no signification, they have to be attached to an idealisation. Both pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality, creating the imagised, eroticised concept of the world that forms the perception of the subject and makes a mockery of empirical objectivity. During its history, the cinema seems to have evolved a particular illusion of reality in which this contradiction between libido and ego has found a beautifully complementary phantasy world. In reality the phantasy world of the screen is subject to the law which produces it. Sexual instincts and identification processes have a meaning within the symbolic order which articulates desire. Desire, born with language, allows the possibility of transcending the instinctual and the imaginary, but its point of reference continually returns to the traumatic moment of its birth: the castration complex. Hence the look, pleasurable in form, can be threatening in content, and it is woman as representation/image that crystallises this paradox.

III. Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look

A. In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, how the musical song-and-dance numbers break the flow of the diegesis.) The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, , yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. This alien presence then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative. As Budd Boetticher has put it:

"What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance."

(A recent tendency in narrative film has been to dispense with this problem altogether; hence the development of what Molly Haskell has called the 'buddy movie,' in which the active homosexual eroticism of the central male figures can carry the story without distraction.) Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen. For instance, the device of the show-girl allows the two looks to be unified technically without any apparent break in the diegesis. A woman performs within the narrative, the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude. For a moment the sexual impact of the performing woman takes the film into a no-man's-land outside its own time and space. Thus Marilyn Monroe's first appearance in The River of No Return and Lauren Bacall's songs in To Have or Have Not. Similarly, conventional close-ups of legs (Dietrich, for instance) or a face (Garbo) integrate into the narrative a different mode of eroticism. One part of a fragmented body destroys the Renaissance space, the illusion of depth demanded by the narrative, it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or icon rather than verisimilitude to the screen.

B. An active/passive heterosexual division of labor has similarly controlled narrative structure. According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like. Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man's role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen. The man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extra-diegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle. This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify. As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. A male movie star's glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror. The character in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator, just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor coordination. In contrast to woman as icon, the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror-recognition in which the alienated subject internalised his own representation of this imaginary existence. He is a figure in a landscape. Here the function of film is to reproduce as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception. Camera technology (as exemplified by deep focus in particular) and camera movements (determined by the action of the protagonist), combined with invisible editing (demanded by realism) all tend to blur the limits of screen space. The male protagonist is free to command the stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action.

C.1 Sections III, A and B have set out a tension between a mode of representation of woman in film and conventions surrounding the diegesis. Each is associated with a look: that of the spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjoyment (connoting male phantasy) and that of the spectator fascinated with the image of his like set in an illusion of natural space, and through him gaining control and possession of the woman within the diegesis. (This tension and the shift from one pole to the other can structure a single text. Thus both in Only Angels Have Wings and in To Have and Have Not, the film opens with the woman as object the combined gaze of spectator and all the male protagonists in the film. She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised. But as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalised sexuality, her show-girl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone. By means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.)

But in psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organisation of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object (an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir); or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous (hence over-valuation, the cult of the female star). This second avenue, fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The first avenue, voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. This sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end. Fetishistic scopophilia, on the other hand, can exist outside linear time as the erotic instinct is focused on the look alone. These contradictions and ambiguities can be illustrated more simply by using works by Hitchcock and Sternberg, both of whom take the look almost as the content or subject matter of many of their films. Hitchcock is the more complex, as he uses both mechanisms. Sternberg's work, on the other hand, provides many pure examples of fetishistic scopophilia.

C.2 It is well known that Sternberg once said he would welcome his films being projected upside down so that story and character involvement would not interfere with the spectator's undiluted appreciation of the screen image. This statement is revealing but ingenuous. Ingenuous in that his films do demand that the figure of the woman (Dietrich, in the cycle of films with her, as the ultimate example) should be identifiable. But revealing in that it emphasises the fact that for him the pictorial space enclosed by the frame is paramount rather than narrative or identification processes. While Hitchcock goes into the investigative side of voyeurism, Sternberg produces the ultimate fetish, taking it to the point where the powerful look of the male protagonist (characteristic of traditional narrative film) is broken in favour of the image in direct erotic rapport with the spectator. The beauty of the woman as object and the screen space coalesce; she is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylised and fragmented by close-ups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator's look. Sternberg plays down the illusion of screen depth; his screen tends to be one-dimensional, as light and shade, lace, steam, foliage, net, streamers, etc, reduce the visual field. There is little or no mediation of the look through the eyes of the main male protagonist. On the contrary, shadowy presences like La Bessiere in Morocco act as surrogates for the director, detached as they are from audience identification. Despite Sternberg's insistence that his stories are irrelevant, it is significant that they are concerned with situation, not suspense, and cyclical rather than linear time, while plot complications revolve around misunderstanding rather than conflict. The most important absence is that of the controlling male gaze within the screen scene. The high point of emotional drama in the most typical Dietrich films, her supreme moments of erotic meaning, take place in the absence of the man she loves in the fiction. There are other witnesses, other spectators watching her on the screen, but their gaze is one with, not standing in for, that of the audience. At the end of Morocco, Tom Brown has already disappeared into the desert when Amy Jolly kicks off her gold sandals and walks after him. At the end of Dishonoured, Kranau is indifferent to the fate of Magda. In both cases, the erotic impact, sanctified by death, is displayed as a spectacle for the audience. The male hero misunderstands and, above all, does not see.

In Hitchcock, by contrast, the male hero does see precisely what the audience sees. However, in the films I shall discuss here, he takes fascination with an image through scopophilic eroticism as the subject of the film. Moreover, in these cases the hero portrays the contradictions and tensions experienced by the spectator. In Vertigo in particular, but also in Marnie and Rear Window, the look is central to the plot, oscillating between voyeurism and fetishistic fascination. As a twist, a further manipulation of the normal viewing process which in some sense reveals it, Hitchcock uses the process of identification normally associated with ideological correctness and the recognition of established morality and shows up its perverted side. Hitchcock has never concealed his interest in voyeurism, cinematic and non-cinematic. His heroes are exemplary of the symbolic order and the law-- a policeman (Vertigo), a dominant male possessing money and power (Marnie)-but their erotic drives lead them into compromised situations. The power to subject another person to the will sadistically or to the gaze voyeuristically is turned on to the woman as the object of both. Power is backed by a certainty of legal right and the established guilt of the woman (evoking castration, psychoanalytically speaking). True perversion is barely concealed under a shallow mask of ideological correctness-the man is on the right side of the law, the woman on the wrong. Hitchcock's skillful use of identification processes and liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male protagonist draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis which parodies his own in the cinema. In his analysis of Rear Window, Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience, the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a central image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa had been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag, so long as she remained on the spectator side. When she crosses the barrier between his room and the block opposite, their relationship is re-born erotically. He does not merely watch her through his lens, as a distant meaningful image, he also sees her as a guilty intruder exposed by a dangerous man threatening her with punishment, and thus finally saves her. Lisa's exhibitionism has already been established by her obsessive interest in dress and style, in being a passive image of visual perfection; Jeffries' voyeurism and activity have also been established through his work as a photo-journalist, a maker of stories and captor of images. However, his enforced inactivity, binding him to his seat as a spectator, puts him squarely in the phantasy position of the cinema audience.

In Vertigo, subjective camera predominates. Apart from flash-back from Judy's point of view, the narrative is woven around what Scottie sees or fails to see. The audience follows the growth of his erotic obsession and subsequent despair precisely from his point of view. Scottie's voyeurism is blatant: he falls in love with a woman he follows and spies on without speaking to. Its sadistic side is equally blatant: he has chosen (and freely chosen, for he had been a successful lawyer) to be a policeman, with all the attendant possibilities of pursuit and investigation. As a result. he follows, watches and falls in love with a perfect image of female beauty and mystery. Once he actually confronts her, his erotic drive is to break her down and force her to tell by persistent cross-questioning. Then, in the second part of the film, he re-enacts his obsessive involvement with the image he loved to watch secretly. He reconstructs Judy as Madeleine, forces her to conform in every detail to the actual physical appearance of his fetish. Her exhibitionism, her masochism, make her an ideal passive counterpart to Scottie's active sadistic voyeurism. She knows her part is to perform, and only by playing it through and then replaying it can she keep Scottie's erotic interest. But in the repetition he does break her down and succeeds in exposing her guilt. His curiosity wins through and she is punished. In Vertigo, erotic involvement with the look is disorienting: the spectator's fascination is turned against him as the narrative carries him through and entwines him with the processes that he is himself exercising. The Hitchcock hero here is firmly placed within the symbolic order, in narrative terms. He has all the attributes of the patriarchal super-ego. Hence the spectator, lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent legality of his surrogate, sees through his look and finds himself exposed as complicit, caught in the moral ambiguity of looking.

Far from being simply an aside on the perversion of the police, Vertigo focuses on the implications of the active/looking, passive/looked-at split in terms of sexual difference and the power of the male symbolic encapsulated in the hero. Marnie, too, performs for Mark Rutland's gaze and masquerades as the perfect to-be-looked-at image. He, too, is on the side of the law until, drawn in by obsession with her guilt, her secret, he longs to see her in the act of committing a crime, make her confess and thus save her. So he, too, becomes complicit as he acts out the implications of his power. He controls money and words, he can have his cake and eat it.

III. Summary

The psychoanalytic background that has been discussed in this article is relevant to the pleasure and unpleasure offered by traditional narrative film. The scopophilic instinct (pleasure in looking at another person as an erotic object), and, in contradistinction, ego libido (forming identification processes) act as formations, mechanisms, which this cinema has played on. The image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the argument a step further into the structure of representation, adding a further layer demanded by the ideology of the patriarchal order as it is worked out in its favorite cinematic form - illusionistic narrative film. The argument returns again to the psychoanalytic background in that woman as representation signifies castration, inducing voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent her threat. None of these interacting layers is intrinsic to film, but it is only in the film form that they can reach a perfect and beautiful contradiction, thanks to the possibility in the cinema of shifting the emphasis of the look. It is the place of the look that defines cinema, the possibility of varying it and exposing it. This is what makes cinema quite different in its voyeuristic potential from, say, strip-tease, theatre, shows, etc. Going far beyond highlighting a woman's to-be-looked-at-ness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself. Playing on the tension between film as controlling the dimension of time (editing, narrative) and film as controlling the dimension of space (changes in distance, editing), cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire. It is these cinematic codes and their relationship to formative external structures that must be broken down before mainstream film and the pleasure it provides can be challenged.

To begin with (as an ending) the voyeuristic-scopophilic look that is a crucial part of traditional filmic pleasure can itself be broken down. There are three different looks associated with cinema: that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion. The conventions of narrative film deny the first two and subordinate them to the third, the conscious aim being always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience. Without these two absences (the material existence of the recording process, the critical reading of the spectator), fictional drama cannot achieve reality, obviousness and truth. Nevertheless, as this article has argued, the structure of looking in narrative fiction film contains a contradiction in its own premises: the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish. Thus the two looks materially present in time and space are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego. The camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion of Renaissance space, flowing movements compatible with the human eye, an ideology of representation that revolves around the perception of the subject; the camera's look is disavowed in order to create a convincing world in which the spectator's surrogate can perform with verisimilitude. Simultaneously, the look of the audience is denied an intrinsic force: as soon as fetishistic representation of the female image threatens to break the spell of illusion, and erotic image on the screen appears directly (without mediation) to the spectator, the fact of fetishisation, concealing as it does castration fear, freezes the look, fixates the spectator and prevents him from achieving any distance from the image in front of him.

This complex interaction of looks is specific to film. The first blow against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions (already undertaken by radical filmmakers) is to free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment. There is no doubt that this destroys the satisfaction, pleasure and privilege of the 'invisible guest,' and highlights how film has depended on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms. Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret.

--Laura Mulvey, originally published - Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp. 6-18

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