"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review (part 2)

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review 

part 1 - 2

Both mechanism discussed in the previous section, Mulvey says, are gendered. Scopophilia in films is a structure which functions on an axis of passive/active with the man always on the active gazing side and the woman on the passive "to-be-looked-at-ness" side (see the male gaze). This is done in two completing manners, with both the male figure within the duegsis and the camera looking at the woman and directing the viewer's objectifying gaze. In plain words, the woman in films in meant to be looked at.

The distinction between the passive woman active man is also manifested in the structure of the cinematic narrative. The films Mulvey surveys revolve around a dominant male figure with which the viewer can identify. This identification is similar to Lacan's mirror stage in which the narcissistic fragmented subjected experiences himself a whole and potent in a reflected self image. Methods that produce cinematic realism aid in this mirror-like identification which reinforces the ego.

According to Mulvey, the female cinematic figure is a paradoxical one. She combines attraction with the playing on deep fears of castration. The male subconscious has two ways of escaping his fear of castration. One is the demystification of the female figure is the dismantling of her mysteries (in films: the female figure is punished or saved by the male figure). The other way to escape fear of being castrated by the woman is through the fetishization of her (for instance as the glamorous unobtainable star). Films, according to Mulvey, attempt to resolve the tension between being attracted to the woman and fearing her, and therefore they provide for the needs of the masculine form of desire.

Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was criticized on the one hand for reinforcing heterosexuality and on the other hand for assuming a passive, un-negotiating viewer. 

      

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review 

part 1 - 2

See also: Laura Mulvey's theory of representation

The male gaze in feminist film theory

Gaze Theory Explained

Take it to the next level:

  

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review (part 1)

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review 

part 1 - 2

In her "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey utilizes psychoanalysis theory as a "political weapon" to demonstrate how the patriarchic subconscious of society shapes our film watching experience and cinema itself. According to Mulvey the cinematic text is organized along lines that are corresponding to the cultural subconscious with is essentially patriarchic. Mulvey argues that the popularity of Hollywood films is determined and reinforced by preexisting social patterns which have shaped the fascinated subject.

Overview of "Visual Pleasure"

Mulvey's analysis in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" combines semiotic methodology of cinematic means of expression with psychoanalytic analysis of desire structures and the formation of subjectivity. The semiotic end of Mulvey's analysis enables the deciphering of how films produce the meanings they produce, while the psychoanalytic side of the article provides the link between the cinematic text and the viewer and explains his fascination through the way cinematic representations interact with his (culturally determined) subconscious.

Mulvey's main argument in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is that Hollywood narrative films use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men. The narrative film structures its gaze as masculine (the male gaze). The woman is always the object of the reifying gaze, not the bearer of it (this has something reminiscent of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing") 

The male gaze 

The cinematic gaze is always produced a masculine both by means of the identification produced with the male hero and through the use of the camera. Mulvey identifies two manners in which Hollywood cinema produces pleasure, manners which arise from different mental mechanisms. The first involves the objectification of the image, and the second one the identification with it. Both mechanisms represent the mental desires of the male subject. The first form of pleasure relates to what Freud termed as scopophilia or the pleasure derived from subjecting someone to one's gaze. The second form of pleasure other which operates alongside the scopophilia is the identification with the represented character which is brought about by needs stemming from the Freudian Ego. 

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review 

part 1 - 2

See also: Laura Mulvey's theory of representation

The male gaze in feminist film theory

Gaze Theory Explained

Take it to the next level:

Hayden White – The Historical Text as Literary Artifact – article summary and review

The form of narrative has traditionally served as a way of delivering events with a story. The historical narrative is often perceived as a series of events presented in a chronological order with the form of a story, the narrative, is a way of representing them. In this the notion of the historical narrative then the manner in which it is related to in classical narratology, at least as far as its more traditional understanding of narrative goes. This perception of narrative distinguishes fictional time and story time in a manner fitting with the premise of structuralism.

In his "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact" Hyden White perceives narrative as a prose written lingual utterance that has a development of events in a way that grants them with coherence and understandability. Hyden White views narrative as a complex of events spread across a sequence of verbally organized times in a manner that creates a gradual development of the events into a comprehensible form. Other philosophers that preceded Hyden White have already pointed out the fact that narrative grants historical events coherence, but Hyden White was the first to suggest the importance of their structuring in prose. In "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact" Hyden White argues that the same series of chronological events could be narrated in different manners by stressing different parts of the series of events, an action which he terms "emplotment". Hyden White does not mean by this interference or change in the order of the historical events in the historical narrative, but simply to a different construction of the same series of event in light of essentially literary conventions and through different emphasis of different events. Hyden White lists four main types of emplotment which are tragedy, satire, comedy and romance.  

Hyden White is without a doubt one of the more influential history philosophers starting from the late 70's till present day. Though some consider him the herald of postmodernism in history, he himself does not consider himself as a postmodernist and indeed a close inspection of his thought reveals a tendency towards traditional thought mainly in his structural approach towards narrative. The Historical Text a Literary Artifact is one of Hyden White's most notable works that illustrate some of his key notions on history and narrative. 

Narrative studies in psychology of discourse

In recent decades an interesting cross-disciplinary meeting is taking place between cognitive psychology and especially discourse psychology

What is Discourse Psychology?

To begin with, discourse psychology IS NOT Discursive psychology. Discourse psychology is a field of study in which the linguistics discipline of discourse analysis and cognitive psychology meet. During the 70's cognitive psychology's interest in understanding and memory was extended to an interest in the processing and understanding of texts, which borrowed tools, methods and theory form discourse analysis, and this eventually led to an interest is stories, which is the realm of narratology.

Discourse psychology is engaged with question such as the comprehension of texts or oral discourses. Inferences are one of the central points of interest for discourse psychology, being everything that requires thought and processing beyond what is given in a text or oral discourse. For example, hypotheses formed in the course of reading are required in order to make sense of an ongoing, uncompleted process, while evaluation is needed to sum up a story's meaning in retrospect. Filling in information gaps that are an essential part of every text is a cognitive function, and that is what discourse psychology is interested in.

The field of discourse psychology is, like cognitive psychology, very much interested in memory, and memory is understood in relation to cognitive schemata or scripts which represents generic knowledge of the world that enables us to fit in every new event of piece of information into known schemes. A scheme, for instance, is what allows us the omit details from a description, story or account and still be understood. In literature or cinema, for instance, a genre is a type of schema that helps us understand what's going on based on certain expectations we have that arise from our knowledge of the genre.

 The difference between discursive psychology and discourse psychology is that discursive psychology is engaged with how psychological features are manifested in discourse, and the way they facilitate its reception and understanding by the human psyche. 

Alan Dershowitz – "Life is Not a Dramatic Narrative" – article review and summary

In his "life is Not a Dramatic Narrtive" (1996) the famous O.J.Simpson trail attorney Alan Dershowitz argues with much vigor against the call to incorporate narratological elements into the discourse of law practice and studies. Stories have a purpose and meaning, Dershowitz says, but life does not, and any attempt to view the later as subjected to the rules and workings of the former will result in the distortion of truth.

Dershowitz line of argument stems for the Chekhov canon, "if in the first chapter you say that there is a gun hung on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail discharge". In reality, though, there are countless guns hung on wall and only very few of them are discharged at a victim. Life is random, and purposeless, it is only us that attempt to ascribe it with some meaning and order, and meaning and order are not an integral part of it. Thus bringing the narrative into the courtroom confuses the working of fiction with the task of finding out the truth.

Another example used by Dershowitz to tell narrative from reality is that of a dream. In a story the inclusion of an ominous dream must be prophetic, for otherwise, were it meaningless, the dream would have not been part of the narrative. In reality, though, people dream all the time, sometimes horrendous dreams, without carrying them out, which makes the dream not only redundant in the attempt to track the truth, but also dangerous.

Dershowitz also argues, following Sartre, that a story is always constructed in hindsight. Its causal principles are only possible when all elements of the narrative relate and contribute towards a already known ending. Reality is chaotic, and endless facts scamper and skirmish about it with no teleology in mind.

Dreshowitz perceives narrative as something which distorts reality rather than mediate it. He is a positivist, believing that actual objective reality is available to our grasp if we only utilize the right methods, which are predominantly aimed at dismissing with deceiving elements, such as narrative. 

Richard Delgado – "Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative" – article review and summary

In his 1989 subversive article "Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative" Richard Delgado holds that a story is not always just a story, but rather a function which creates order and coherency and which manifests a certain meaning, thus being a shared reality experience of a group, and in fact forming that group. The linkage between narrative and group identity, especially out-groups, turns for Delgado the field of social politics into an arena of competing stories, different accounts of the same reality. A story, the argument goes, has a sort of double function. On the one hand Delgado argues that oppression is not just a statutory or social matter, but rather something that has to do with mindset and a a perception which are manifested in narratives, meta- and sub-, designed to justify in the eyes of the ruling class and group the situation as it is, a narrative that they impose and coerce on other groups in order to fend off any attempts for change. On the other hand stories can subvert dominant narratives and be a means of deconstructing ruling mindsets. In other words, stories create a shred reality and agreement, and so do counter-stories that serve as cohesion for out groups.   

In "Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative" Richard Delgado uses five stories which relate to the same event in which a black professor is denied a teaching position in a white-dominated faculty. It is clear for Delgado that the same object can be described in different way, but for him the same goes for the co-structuring of different objects and the perception of events' meaning. Accordingly, moral judgments are found in a state of constant under-determination in relation to reality. Telling reality is in fact creating it, and Delgado argues that "we decide what is, and, almost simultaneously, what ought to be." (p.292).

  Delgado analyses how stories pick and choose facts in order to depict a clear image of a otherwise ambiguous course of events. Stories are not only manifested by the things they note and the questions they answer, but also by what is left out and the questions that are not asked. Delgado shows how the story of the in-groups (the white professor) is designed to quell criticism and reassure that everything is the way it ought to be. On the other hand a report of the same story, as it were, by a different party (the black candidate) can offer a completely different account which destabilizes the agreed upon narrative and reveals its problems through different details, emphasis and organization that turn against the standard narrative's guiding logic. The court's narrative, on the other hand, uses a factual screen to determine which details will make its narrative and codes them into law lingo the works to disarm them. Delgado's fourth story in "an authentic counterstory" by a radical student which confronts the system directly and bluntly, this in turn allowing for the accused to fend off and cancel the content of the story on account of its form and context. Where the direct assault failed an anonymous leaflet narrating and pseudo-imaginary story invites postponement of judgment and cooperation with it, thus managing to infiltrate and subvert the ruling narrative.

So Richard Delgado argues that stories can be means in the hands of out-groups to challenge the mindset which is the source of their oppression. Delgado explains the all might benefit from giving voice to such narratives: the oppressed by asserting their reality and oppressors by meeting these challenges and developing towards a shared narrative. 

Peter Brooks – "Policing Stories" – article review and summary

Peter Brooks's classic article "Policing Stories" relates to the ongoing debate regarding the role of narrative in the judicial system and law theory. Brook's ground claim is that narrative function, in the court and in general, as a Kantian category of sorts which determines our grasp of a certain array of phenomenon and constructing it into a coherent understating, a function which naturally hold much weight in the courtroom. Based on this understanding of the role and function of narrative Brooks argues that there exists a repressed connection between law and narrative. Brooks engages with the exemplary question of whether details of a prior conviction should be presented when deliberating a similar yet separate offence performed by the same person, and he notes that the prevailing approach in law is to relate only to those details which are able to establish a logical syllogism between fact and rolling. Thus Brooks in fact demonstrates how courts do actually acknowledge to potency of narrative and its potential effect, but strive to reduce this capacity by "policing" stories through evidence law which limit the narrative into a shape that is agreeable by the court. Brooks holds that the attempt to limit narrative in judicial practice in fact reveals the law systems realization of the power of a story, and the attempt to deny it by adhering strictly to empirical evidence and sound logical conclusions. 

Peter Brooks argues that the court establishes the story with the compass of its own rules and conventions which are governed by its world view. The choice of details which make the narrative, what's included and what's left out, is what determines the choice between competing narratives.  

One of the notable case studies presented in Brooks's "Policing Stories" is a trail held following a woman's rape complaint. 4 versions of the event were presented (the woman, the assailant, the first appeal and second appeal). The facts of the matter under discussion were agreed upon, yet they served as basis for 4 completely different stories. Using this example Brooks argues that narrative does not consists only of facts but of the way they are understood together and establish evident meaning. This way, Brooks hold, depends on the judge's perception of reality which he refers to, following Roland Barthes, ad "doxa" (greek: conjecture).   Thus accounts of events delivered in court are not and cannot be strictly factual, despite the attempt to police them, and they articulate perceptions and values which latently guide all those practicing law in their ruling.

Peter Brook's recommendations in light of his analysis of the function of narrative in law are first to adopt narratology theory in order to track the narrative's function in the courtroom, this acknowledging it. He further claims that the reactions of agents that rule cases could be understood through the way the actively create, or construct, the story. This leads to the recognition o f narrative's function in law in particular and the way we perceive reality in general.

Monika Fludernik's model for natural narratology

Essentially what Monila Fludernik is trying to suggest in her "Towards a Natural Narratology" is a new model for narrative analysis which is based on her notions of experienciality, narrativity and narrativization.

Following Nilli Diengott's analysis, Fludernik's model is divided into 4 levels:

the first level of the model is related to the question "what" (to distinguish from the question of "how" in levels 2 and 3). This level is essentially pre-understanding of how the world functions and contains "parameters of real-life experience" which are the most basic, initial cognitive frames of experiencing. These cognitive frames are what Fludernik calls "core schemata" which relate to presupposed understanding of reality, and they include such schemas as "agency" and "goals". They make up a configuration of an experienced event that includes (and must include) an evaluation of it and its meaning. This configuration is of a teleological nature, a mechanism of causality, and it must do so in mutual agreement with the function of evaluation. These cognitive schemas are natural on account of being a part of our consciousness, enabling us to grasp a world of action and change.

The second level relates to "how" and is a mediating one, containing according to Fludernik four cognitive frames or parameters: telling, viewing, experiencing and acting. These are explanatory in the sense that they mediate a story to us and render it accessible. These categories are also natural on account of "explanatory patterns" utilized by us in understanding our daily experience. This level is also reflective by accounting for the presence of consciousness.

The third level also deals with "how" and is a cultural pattern of storytelling and includes genres and conventions. Fludernik does not contrast "cultural" with "natural", and she argues that this level is also natural in the sense that we naturally employ these culturally acquired capabilities. This level, for instance, includes the poetics of a genre, allowing for its creation and consumption.

Level four is a dynamic process of narrativization in one narrative. Here the previous levels are employed in order to construct a coherent narrative that settles problems and contradictions in the understanding of the text.      

Definition of narrativization according to Monika Fludernik

Monika Fludernik's constitutive concept it that of narrativization. Inspired by Jonathan Culler's notions on naturalization, Fludernik sees narrativization as a process in which narrativiry is imposed on a discourse, thus turning it into a narrative. This process is a dynamic one, and Is facilitated only by a "interpretative recuperations" carried out during the reading or hearing (or viewing) process. Narrativization is an action, putting the title of narrative and the property of narrativity as something outside of the text which is imposed on it, thus constructing, rather than reviling, it as a narrative.

This is not to say that we are free to decide on our own what is a narrative and what is not, culture and discourse are at work here, and we grant in advance the expectation for narrative to something which is accepted as "literature" but not to "leaflet". But what this does mean is that narrative is a relative concept. This is why Fludernik is so focused on natural narratives. For while a western person might perceive experimental literature as a narrative, other cultures might not agree. But spontaneous oral narration of experience is much more universal, and therefore Fludernik asserts that this is the prototype for all subsequent cultural developments of mediums and forms of narrative. So Fludernik places the natural narrative at the head of the taxonomy of narrative types. This enables Fludernik's model to have an diachronic aspect to it, explaining how from natural narrative our cognitive parameters have expanded and matured into more complex forms and genres which are still based on that basic, innate, universal capacity to experience someone else's story. The fact that we are able to naturally consume a genre (such as 'stream of consciousness') is reducible to a. developments stemming from natural narrative, and b. our capacity to build upon our intuitive basic abilities to narrativize and extend them to different types of discourses.     

Definition of Narrativity according to Monika Fludernik

Narrativity is one of the main, and perhaps the predominant concept which are at the focus of Monika Fludernik's study "Towards a Natural Narratology". For fludernik narrative is not restricted oral or written lingual forms, but also to theatre and cinema.

Fludernik isn't quite clear on what makes the difference between narrative and narrativity. Both of them her in her opinion perceptual activities, and it seems that narrative is determined as such by its degree of narrativity. So narrativity for Fludernik is a scalable feature, meaning that a text (or oral discourse or movie or play) can have a higher of lesser degree of narrativity, which makes it more or less a narrative. Experientiality is what determines the degree of narrativity, and so a dry, referential and factual text such as a history article has a lesser degree of narrtivity and therefore is a less of a narrative than fiction.

But Fludernik's notion of narrativity goes deeper than just experientiality. Narrattivity is not an attribute of a text, not a formal or even medium feature. Narrativity is something that precedes the text and medium, a sort of deep structure which represents a prototype of experience and experientiality, of being embodied, acting and a consciousness. In other words, narrativity in a way is a deeper kind of mimesis, mimicking in its abstract pre-shaped form the very experience of living and acting in the world (this is why Fludernik's analysis strives for universality). This abstract prototype is not, as mentioned above, a feature inherent it the text, but rather something that the readers invests in the text in the process of constructing its meaning. Therefore narrativity is the product of narativization which is an action, a process, something imposed on a text or discourse.

The implications of Monika Fludernik's model are varied and wide. For instance, she sees narrative of something that does not necessarily involve a plot, and there can be a narrative without plot if the experientialy criterion is otherwise met.  

Jonathan Culler's concept of naturalization and its adaptation by Monika Fludernik

In her challenging and inspiring work "Towards a Natural Narrtology"  (1996) Monika Fludernik attributes part of her inspiration to Jonathan Culler and his work that suggested the heuristic concept of "naturalization".

Jonathan Culler's "naturalization" relates to readers' strategies that are employed as interpretive methods for reconciling what appears to be inconsistencies in the text. In a sense Culler's naturalization is the process of making something strange and puzzling in the text fit in with knowledge and perceptions we have of out existence, what is often referred to as mental model, schema or cognitive frames. That is, something which is odd about the text or unexplainable is reconstructed by the reader in a form that makes sense, that sense being something that we know and are able to explain.

Naturalization, as suggested by Jonathan Culler, is a process carried out by the reader, in response, but not in a binding relation, to elements in the text. It is essentially an individual action, and therefore can vary from person to person. However, social and cultural elements go to work here by providing common shared and socially acquired cognitive frames, thus insuring that a mutual understanding of what a narrative is about will be fairly possible within a certain social and cultural context.    

  

Cullers' naturalization bears an interesting, almost opposite relation to the Russian Formalists' concept of estrangement. Estrangement was defined by the Russian Formalists as the main function of art and literature that takes something familiar and "refreshing" our grasp of it by making it suddenly strange. Naturalization, as is evident, works the other way around. This alludes to the notion that, when dealing with narratives, the quintessential trait of a narrative is its ability to induce naturalization by the reader.

This is very much Monika Fludernik's approach in "Towards a 'Natural' Narratology. She perceived narrativity defined by the experientiality of an anthropomorphic agent, or in other words, our apparently innate ability to narrate and receive narration of experience. Monkia Fludernik replaces Culler's "naturalization" with "narrativization". Narrativization is the action we carry out in making the text fit a shape of experience we are familiar with. In other words, Fludernik's narrativization is making a given story be understandable is relation to a prototypical "meta-story" we inherit from our culture and society, but also from the mere experience of being alive. Narrativization, in a sense, is life and fiction coming to terms. 

Experienciality according to Monika Fludernik

As was mentioned in the main overview of her work, the concept of experienciality is viewed by Monika Fludernik as the defining characteristic of narrative and narrativity. In this she departs from the classic narratology notion of narrative as a series of events the relate to one another through causality.

Experienciality can be understood as a copy of sorts of a real life experience, as something which has the appearance of something that is actually happening. Experienciality, according to Fludernik, has a number of traits that might assist in elaborating the concept.

Fludernik stresses that experienciality should be understood as differing from experience. She views experienciality as a dynamics that strives towards an illustrative effect and the attribution of meaning to the story. Experienciality is a state relevant for both the reader and the narrator – an anthropomorphic entity to which facts of the story are relevant – thus establishing the tellability of the narrative.

Embodiment is a term related by Fludernik to the anthropomorphic experienciality. Embodiment related to the state of physically being in space and time, a state that is interdependent of cognitive schemas that construct our experience. These schemas precede actual experience in the same manner lingual prototypes and universals precede actual objects. If we take for example the event of eating in a restaurant we find that we have a prototypical script on such a happening which allows us to comprehend and act within the situation.

Consciousness is also a part of experienciality. This is manifested mainly in a conscious agent for whom the events and actions of the narrative have meaning. Things are never sad, existing, scary etc. just on their own account, they must be so for someone, and that someone in Fludernik's view is the narrator. This gains importance if we view narrative as a medium which enables relating someone else's consciousness.

Mimesis is the final crucial element is Fludernik's notion of experienciality. Fludernik stressed that "mimesis must NOT be identified as imitation but needs to be treated as the artificial and illusionary projection of a semiotic structure which the reader recuperates in terms of a fictional reality". Mimesis, in other words, is not what traditional thought saw as imitation, but rather something constructive. Mimesis for Fludernik is a part of narrativization process by creating some sort of semiotic analogy between the text's fictional reality and actual reality.     

Monika Fludernik: Towards a Natural Narratology- summary

In her formidable work "Towards a 'Natural' Narratology" Monika Fludernik attempts at reconceptualizing the basic premise of narratology in the aftermath of post-structural thought, which is intuitively hostile and suspicious of the term 'natural' that Monika Fludernik seeks to set in the forefront of her theory. But as Fludernik stresses, 'natural' is assigned by her not to texts or textual techniques, but to cognitive frames, namely equating the elusive quality "narrativity" with "experientiality", a "quasi-mimetic evocation of 'real life experience'. So, Fludernik's "differentia specifica" for narrativity and narrative is the embodied anthropomorphic experiencer.

Following Labov, Monika Fludernik relates to 'natural narrative' as spontaneously occurring storytelling. She therefore relates to such types of oral narrative as preceding more complex forms of narrative such as literature. Fludernik's reason for doing so is her hypothesis that there exists a cognitive schema which correlates to formal aspects of narrative, with their essence found in the most basic prototype form of natural narrative.  This is not to say the Fludernik rejects poststructuralism, for all narrative in her eyes is constructed, but she does claim that there are universally valid cognitive components that instill a discourse with the quality of narrativity.   

Narrativity is defined by Monika Fludernik as "a function of narrative texts and centers on experientiality of an anthropomorphic nature". This definition, for example, refutes and contradicts in a way with Hyden White's line of thought, making history a lesser form of narrative for its lack of experientiality. 

Narrativity for Fludernik is never something inherent in the text, but rather something attributed to it by the reader which constructs the text as a narrative. Therefore it is dependant solely on the reader and his interpretation.

One of Fludernik's .. which classify her as a post-classic narratologist, is her negation of fictionality in the definition of a narrative. Referentiality is not the issue, it is all about the way we experience and respond to a certain form of information. 

Monika Fludernik's writing in "Towards a Natural Narrative" is elaborate and complex. Here you will find a series of articles attempting to shed light on some of the concepts employed by Flundernik and reviews on some of the main themes of her oftentimes elusive thought.