Necia Chronister
9/29/04
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

In her essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey suggests a pleasure in film viewing that is guided by unconscious patriarchal standards shaped by an active/male passive/female dichotomy.  Mulvey attempts to use psychoanalysis to critique this model, concentrating on two sources of pleasure: the scopophilic/voyeuristic (Freud) and the narcissistic (Lacan).  Visual pleasure in narrative cinema comes from either a.) the male power to objectify the female and contain the threat of castration that she invariably presents him, or b.) his pleasure in projecting himself onto an idealized male character.  However, in MulveyÂ’s attempt to utilize psychoanalysis and convenient examples, she effectively discusses women in the uncomplicated way that reinforces their subjugation.  In short, Mulvey fails to problematize the gaze.  Though M is loaded with Freudian and Lacanian imagery—the knife motif that represents the intertwining pleasure of penetration with the threat of castration (bzw.) that the first time we see BeckertÂ’s face is in a mirror—, a more fruitful way to discuss Mulvey in terms of Lang is to examine the intersections of gender and the gaze in M.

Where Muvey fails to acknowledge the possibility of a female gaze, Lang demands one.  The gaze in M is an overwhelmingly male one.  Equally importantly: it is incomplete, perhaps even incompetent.  Police and the criminal underworld direct their gaze both at a seemingly futile search for Beckert and at each other.  Likewise, Beckert’s gaze expresses his inability to help himself from murder.  Lang calls on an integration of the female gaze, calling on mothers to take better watch over their children.  An integration of the female gaze in the public realm is the single most important way in which to protect from the danger and incompetence of the solely male gaze. 

If the narrative logic of the film demands a female gaze, the editing style makes that demand explicit.  The camera provides the audience with a gaze that can be assumed to be male—considering its mobility and access to male spheres—and provides the viewer a more ubiquitous, yet still incomplete gaze.  Both the viewer and the camera are arrested in this gaze.  We are unable to participate, either to prevent Elsie Beckmann’s murder, or to capture (and later save or condemn) Beckert. 

Lang’s solution for capturing Beckert is to deemphasize the male gaze—to prioritize audio clues and to have a blind man “spot” Beckert.  (Likewise, Beckert defends himself from his own impulses by closing his eyes and whistling.)  In deemphasizing the gaze, Lang validates Frau Beckmann’s attentive listening at the beginning of the film, as well as the audience’s abilities to hear what we don’t see.  Audio is not gendered, as the gaze is.  Nevertheless, Lang warns that the female gaze must be integrated in order to prevent such a situation in the future.  Frau Beckmann’s message in the last line of the film: we women must take a more active gaze in the public realm.

Lang problematizes the concept of the male gaze further by denying the audience its scopophilic/narcissistic pleasures.  No single character permits complete objectification or complete personal identification, and no single character permits an erotic gaze.  Though the camera’s perspective can be considered a male one, we do not share the gaze of a leading male character.  We may sympathize with (or objectify) one character or another during the film, but this identification lies across the board—with the police investigators, the vigilantes, Beckert, and Frau Beckmann.  Lang does not allow us to project ourselves onto any one character, at least not for more than a few minutes at a time.  In fact, the fixated, objectifying, perhaps erotic gaze that the viewer might normally be allowed to assume is the very gaze that Beckert possesses and that is a threat to the characters in this film.  As Lang demonstrates the danger and incompleteness of the male gaze, the viewer must reflect upon his/her pleasure in watching.  Does our visual pleasure fit the scopophilic/narcissistic dichotomy that Mulvey suggests or is the viewing pleasure more complex than that?  How do female viewers fit into the equation?