Questions for November 1 responses:

In five short essays of 150-200 words, respond to the following questions:

(1) At the beginning of "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey discusses the ways in which traditional Hollywood films reflect and exploit the psychological patterns and common social assumptions in which the construction of masculinity in patriarchal society depends on the subordination of women to prop up the self-confidence of men, and the power of men to tell women what their roles are, and what their worth is. Mulvey concludes:

Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman as bearer, not maker, of meaning.

(Mulvey, 15)

Discuss some examples of the way women are treated as "objects" which men have the right and the power to contol in the Hitchcock and de Palma films we have watched, or in the texts we have read previously this semester (in Genesis, or Paradise Lost, or in the Brut commercial, for example).

(2) On p. 17 and following pages Mulvey suggests that Hollywood movies construct a symbolically voyeuristic position for viewers that is analogous to the behavior of Peeping Toms. Describe and discuss her case for this analogy and why it is important to a feminist analysis of cinema.

(3) On pp. 154-160 of her essay "Postmodern Vertigo," Ann Cvetkovich compares the romantic and psychologically complex representation of sexual attraction depicted in the relationship of Scottie and Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo to the pornographic and psychologically superficial representation of sexual attraction depicted in the relationship of Jake and Gloria/Holly in Body Double. Describe some of the key differences she points out and discuss her interpretation of the significance of these differences.

(4) In the following passage, toward the end of her essay, on p. 159, Ann Cvetkovich suggests that Holly's personal independence and lack of emotional investment in Jake--consistent with the fact that she's a commercially successful porn star, rather than a relatively poor shop girl--give her a sort of control over her situation that can be read as a "feminist moment":

Holly Body and Jake's encounter is not loaded with the same psychological and emotional intensity created in Vertigo by the drama of Scottie's desire to recapture the lost Madeleine and of Judy's conflict between wanting to please him and wanting to be loved for herself. However, its superficiality allows Holly Body to escape Judy's fatal investment in the man who pursues her. Her continual resistance to Jake and her streetwise toughness give her a strength and charisma that make for a feminist moment in the film. As a woman who sells her sexuality, she remains in control of her body as commodity, never susceptible to making the exchange an emotional one. She matter-of-factly tells Jake what kinds of scenes she will and won't perform, and by openly acknowledging that she is playing a role maintains an emotional distance unavailable to Judy in her disguise as Madeleine.

Do you see other examples in the films and in the critics' discussions of them that support Cvetkovich's assertion that Body Double offers a kind of positive feminist interpretation that is unavailable in Rear Window or Vertigo?