Mulvey begins the essay by stating how films perpetuate “pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject,” and notes how they play on and reveal erotic ways of looking that reify sexual difference and hegemonic, sexist tropes (803). She describes this problematic positioning of women in cinema, wherein a phallocentric, patriarchal, and straight erotic tradition in film has led to the female characters as symbols of lack—castrated by a male viewership who both desire and fear their distinctly non-male capaciousness and substance. Furthermore, Mulvey argues, the phallus has no power or presence without her, as her very lack signifies its presence. Therefore, woman is conceived of symbolically as both jealously lacking, and as fertile mother, but she is not presented as a legitimate character with agency and verbal expression. Mulvey contends that a psychoanalytic reading can be employed to understand and correct these wrongdoings and thus can be seen as a "political weapon" (803). She suggests that alternative, non-Hollywood cinema may be an appropriate avenue to redress these sexist structures of power and aesthetic expression, while acknowledging the difficulty of dismantling the language of the unconscious, using a language that is already created by and for men.
Then, Mulvey discusses the ways that film creates pleasure for the viewer. She first identifies Freud's concept of "scopophilia," or the pleasure derived from looking. As she suggests, viewers enjoy objectifying others in both a controlling and curios manner, which can also verge on voyeuristic perversion. She describes how the darkness of the cinema, the angles of the shots, and positioning of the screen and seats provides the illusion of peering into another world. In this arrangement, the viewer can repress his exhibitionism and project it onto the protagonist, while engaging instead with his voyueristic fantasies. Further, Mulvey argues, the conventions of cinema play on one's narcissistic impulses stemming from the constitution of the ego, and the idealization of and identification with the likeness of one's image, much like Lacan's infant during the mirror stage. In this sense, the viewer finds pleasure in seeing his more perfect ego ideal in the form of the protagonist. With these two tensions at play, Mulvey argues, the cinema allows one to both lose and reinforce their ego in equally satisfying ways.
Mulvey then explores how cinema recapitulates stereotypes of active masculinity and passive femininity as a function of the above forms of pleasure; the woman is the looked-at object and the man is relatable onlooker. Citing Budd Boetticher, Mulvey opines that women exist in cinema to spur the action of men and in and of themselves are not imbued with importance. She becomes an object of eroticism both for male characters in the movie and for the gaze of the male viewer. The male viewer plays spectator to that eroticism, participating in the demonization or paternalization of the female character—a process through which he is granted power. Mulvey then unpacks the nuances of this power dynamic using psychoanalytic theory to explain the male sadism that unconsciously allows this dynamic to function, as well as the cinematic strategies used to embody and uphold it.
To further explore her theory, Mulvey looks towards two directors who engage with the pleasures of voyeurism and identification in different ways. First, she analyzes Sternberg, who, in catering to the male fear of castration, breaks the woman down into fragmented body parts—creating "the ultimate fetish" on the screen (812). She then looks to Hitchcock, whom Mulvey sees as an example of the "male gaze," in which the male spectator seamlessly takes on the male character's perspective. Mulvey cites Vertigo and Rear Window as films in which voyeurism and the male gaze play central roles in the plot and overall appeal. She concludes the essay by reiterating her thesis that film-makers have the capacity to stop catering to the "neurotic needs of the male ego" (816). While she does not claim to have a specific way forward, as her starting point is simply to challenge the status quo, she does suggest that filmmakers limit the intrusive gaze that allows no objective distance—breaking away from the active/passive paradigm in which woman is the loved and hated object.
