Social media text - Research Paper Example

The Cinema Satisfies a Primordial Wish for Pleasurable Looking The world of cinema is characterized by sexual imbalance where pleasure is linked to male activeness of female passiveness. The female form is styled to act as an object of male gaze. Cinema offer certain pleasures and being looked at is one of such pleasures. In all famous cinemas, women are objectified. They often become the subject of male gaze. The women are subjected to controlling and curious gazes from men. Therefore, most films perpetuate male voyeurism. Moreover, cinema aids in development of scopophilia, which is the pleasure, derive with looking or being looked at. In Mulvey’s opinion, women are often seen as a symbol of castration and most films making involve manipulation of females to bring visual pleasure to the film watchers (Mulvey, 1990)
Mulvey argues that the pleasure associated with cinema is directed towards gender relationships, which relates images and spectators. In cinemas, the male acts as the prime monitor as well as the one who bears the gaze. On the other hand, females are just presented as passive objects who are subjected to the male gauze and male pleasure. Therefore, cinemas project fantasy on female body through filming and editing done with the aim of making female characters objects of pleasure. Therefore, women are often presented “….as erotic objects for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium…” (Mulley, 1990, pp. 33). The editing enables the filmmakers to combine the gazes of the male characters and those of the spectators without breaking the authenticity of the film story.
Female characters are thus forced to identify with a masochistic position. Mulvey concludes that female spectators can only identify with the active desire if they assume a masculine position.
Blackness Is Constructed As an Ideology, Which Had To Be Learned, and Could Only Be Learned In A Certain Moment
The idea of color is an idea that can be learnt and leads to use of certain details to classify people. Moreover, characterization of people in terms of color varies in different regions. A good example is blackness. Definition and characterization of people as black varies in different countries. Moreover, characterization of people as blacks is influenced by different factors that are learned and passes from generation to generation. Gordon argues that words as well as work by black abolitionists in the 19th Century have played a great role in constructing the identity of black people. The language used by abolitionists has played a great role in constructing the identity of black people. Moreover, the identity has been memorized and can thus be learned and altered in different moments in life (Gordon, 2006).
According to Gordon (2006, pp. 36) “…an ideology operates like a god or a spirit who pervades a place or inhabits human bodies that it can be presented as natural, normal, and unquestioned.” The black identity is an example of an ideology constructed by abolitionist. The ideology has somehow become associated with black people who believe that they must always struggle for their freedom. They have learnt this from the notion that black faced with oppression always struggle for freedom. Therefore, blackness is constructed as an ideology, which had to be learned in a certain moment, which was mainly during the period of abolition (Gordon, 2006).
References
Gordon, D. (2006). Black Identity: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalism. New York: SIU Press.
Mulvey, L. (1990). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In P. Erens , Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (pp. 28-40). New York: Indiana University Press. Read More