Overview:
Mulvey's article acts as a quintessential basis of most film and gaze theory, yet although the theory topic is set in the cys, white mainstream background, it leaves one huge component of that world untouched: How men are represented, inscribed and pressured in the films they act as hero of. It utilizes Mulvey as a basis to talk about the topic of maleness and male representation in film and adds on to the theory from a necessary perspective.
Topic 1: Gender Identification
While Mulvey argues in her Visual Pleasure essay that Men will identify with male characters and "gaze" upon female figures for a voyeuristic pleasure, she fails to go in depth with how exactly it is an audience can identify with a character on screen. Neale discusses this topic using both Mulvey and through quoting John Ellis's book, Visible Fictions:
"Ellis argues that identification is never simply a matter of men identifying with male figures on the screen and women identifying with female figures. Cinema draws on and involves many desires, many forms of desire. And desire itself is mobile, fluid, constantly transgressing identities, positions and roles. Identifications are multiple, fluid at points even contradictory." (Cohan 10)
Neale goes on to discuss tow types of identification: Narcessistic, and Fantasies/Dreams, which in some ways seem to ally themselves to Mulvey's classifications of Ego-Narcessism and Voyeurism. However he goes on to say that such identification cannot be so starkly contrasted and, using a quote of Ellis's, explains that Identification is "multiple and fractured" (Cohan 11). He says "identification involves boththe recognition of self in the image on the screen, a narcessistic identification and the identification of self with the various positions that are involved in the fictional narration" (11).
It is because of this that the viewpoint of the character, or in video game's case, the avatar, matters. In order to establish a viewpoint that feels both human and genuine, every film, or game, or television show must define in its viewpoint (gaze) its own identity as either male or female (although I would argue that some films even try to establish sexuality as well.
Topic 2: Narcissistic Identification:
Neale posits that narcessistic identification is particularly important to the process of gendering a film as masculine.
"narcessism and narcessistic identification both involve phantasies of power, omnipotence, mastery and control" (Cohan 11), and in video games these things become an actuality in terms of player avatar relations. In many ways, the player does hold all of these things over the avatar in a game. Where Mulvey assumes that such a gaze, being active, holding power, must be masculine, I believe it is possible to extend this to feminine participation as well. Having control over a gaze has changed, and it is no longer possible to assume that every film is gendered around the cys straight male. However the concept of fantasies and dreams being concurrent with the human process of identification through the method of narcessistic control seems more than reasonable.
He quotes Mulvey again on narcessistic fantasy, where Mulvey asserts that the fantasy is the product of desiring the "more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego" (Cohan 12).
In some ways this quote can take us back to Mulvey, and from there all the way back to Freud and the theory of female penis envy. In this theory, it is assumed that the female suffers from a lack of a penis and represents a male, castrated other. This castration represents power and the phallus acts as a symbolic form of it. In Film Noir, women were often shown to attain a metaphorical phallus, perhaps a gun, and hold a power that they were not supposed to have. Noir generally ends with the evil female's power taken from her by force and she is often shown killed by her own weapon, effectively 'putting the female back in her place'. However, if we ignore the more gender-centric part of this theory and instead focus on fantasy giving us the ability for "the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ego" (12), we can see that in some ways Video game characters act as a metaphorical phallus of the new century: Videogames enable humanity to do super-human feats. It gives us a more perfected perception of ourselves. This is the avatar's strength in identification: depending on our needs, certain videogames and the avatars that play through them are able to complete our deepest desires.
Sometimes those desires require a male avatar, sometimes a female. By having these different avatars available for our use, we are able to receive kinds of satisfaction that we cannot through our own stilted viewpoint.
3. Male Genres and Sado-Masochistic Themes:
"it is not surprising... that 'male' genres and films constantly involve sado-masochistic themes, scenes, and phantasies or that male heroes can at times be marked as the object of an erotic gaze." (Cohan 13)
The easily identifiable fact that male heroes are marked object of an erotic gaze does not intrigue me so much as the societal comment that male genres are privy to sado-masochistic fantasies. How many times in film, television and videogames does someone get most intently involved in a scene where a male character is bleeding, damaged, and near death only to come back as the underdog and win. This melodrama used to be found in only male centric films. Only recently has this kindof melodramatic underdog story been used with violent implications in films involving female protagonists. Even now some men are still uncomfortable with the idea of playing as a female character because of misguided chivalry: they do not wish to see the woman get hurt and find it unpalatable. Regaurdless of sex, this sadistic voyeurism exists and has existed since before the days of the Romans, when men were pitted against each other to fight in the Roman Colosseum.
So what is this Sadistic Voyeurism? According to Neale, such sadistic means of pleasure are derived from a heterosexual patriarchical society: because "the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look...[it] must be motivated in some other way, its erotic component repressed." (Cohan 14)
This "some other way" occurs frequently in video games, not only through the intentional and harsh use of violence and damage dealt upon the male character but through the narcissistic identification of the player. Because we see ourselves in this character, we feel an attachment to it that cannot be described as wholly erotic but empathetic. By shifting our focus, we are able to see the male character as an inner vestige of what we, the player, feels and therefore the achievement of winning, even as the underdog, is made a personal achievement rather than an appreciation of the beaten and bloodied male form."sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory and defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and end" (Mulvey 1975: 14)
In a sense, even the concept of the "final boss battle" is not new. Neale notes that voyeuristic sadism occurs not only through fights and other violence but also through structures that create a narrative form, including fetishistic looking-- where in certain components of the scene are stopped in order to provide (in this case, the player) with a visceral visual catharsis: A scene which shows what is coming and just how difficult it will be to stop. The scene is described as "highly ritualized" (Cohan 17) with a certain method of performance needed to overcome the final obstacle. Take the concept of the boss battle and apply this theory to it. It fits. The swooping overhead shot sets up the scene for the player to grasp even a small amount of what the task before them will be, and the triumph they should feel, provided they succeed. It does not matter if the over-all battle is systematically simple-- if the boss looks big, scary and dangerous enough, the player should feel personal satisfaction upon defeating it.
Why is Lara Croft Attractive Beaten up, when Elizabeth is not?
Something I will need to address is how this sadistic voyeurism is addressed when the character is female. Why do women seem to not mind playing as bloodied men when men seem to mind playing as bloodied women? If narcissistic identification is all that is necessary, what is the missing step that keeps some male players from being able to watch themselves, as a female character, be beaten up? How much of it is influenced from the male-hetero-normative society? I do not know yet, but I will try to explore for this answer.
Finally, this article is extremely useful in pointing out the portions of Mulvey's theory that was left unanswered. Yet it still falls short of gendered needs. By polarizing both sides of the gendered film debate, both Mulvey and Neale have created another binary system that must be broken down. The binary of gazes should eventually fall the way most gendered theory has: on the basis that everything is more of a spectrum than poles. Each gaze is more nuanced than we expect
Do not turn off the power while your progress is saving.
LEX saved the Game
This is fantastic so far.
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