Psychoanalytic Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’

In 1975, when Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ was published in ‘Screen’ magazine, it was considered by many to be the founding document of a new form of film criticism, a “psychoanalytical feminist film theory.” It is a ‘spectatorship theory’, which owes a lot to the work of Sigmund Freud, and refers to his notions of ‘scopophilia’, which is defined as pleasure in looking, taking other people as objects, pleasure in surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim. Also Freud’s notions of male ‘castration anxiety’ (also known as the Oedipus Complex) are key to Mulvey’s argument, with phallocentrism being one of the main themes of her essay. As well as the psychoanalytical approach, Mulvey gives a transcendental, ‘Neo-Kantian’ critique on the position and role of the viewer.

In her essay Mulvey argues that mainstream Hollywood cinema (and in particular the genre of film noir) is coded and given meaning via a phallocentric, patriarchal symbolic order. The desire (for self-presence and control) and language of such films, she states, is primarily male, and the role played by the female is a passive one and that of the representation of a threat. The female ‘lack’ or ‘absence’ of a phallus induces ‘castration anxiety’ in the male. So, in this (male) order of things, and therefore in mainstream cinema -“woman is the bearer, not maker of meaning.” This manipulation of visual pleasure, whilst repressing feminine desire, conforms to the dominant order. Throughout the viewing of a film, the female spectator is forced into adopting the male viewpoint, and thus masochistically objectifying the female characters, and in turn herself.

Mulvey goes on to say that the cinema auditorium itself plays a part in this patriarchal order. It allows an isolation effect, due to the darkness of the theatre and brightness of the screen, which in turn allows the repressed exhibitionism of the spectator to be projected onto the performer(s). It allows, and “satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking.” She links this with the work of Jacques Lacan, who wrote an essay “The Mirror-Phase as Formative of the Function of the I (1966)”. In it he details that, an infant, between the ages of 6 to 18 months, though still “outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence” , is able to recognise and identify it’s self in the mirror. This “situates the instance of the ego” , and from this point on the child has an exaggerated or misconstrued sense of self. This is brought on by the seemingly more perfect, ‘mirror-image’. As Mulvey puts it, “Recognition is thus overlaid with misrecognition.” She theorises that whilst in the cinema, the (male) spectator returns to this mirror-phase, because they are identifying with the main (male) protagonist, on the mirror- like screen, misrecognising him as their more ideal self, the more perfect ego, providing a narcissistic voyeurism, that is, scopophilia.

Mulvey is not the only critic to refer to the work of Lacan, and to link the cinema to this mirror-phase; Jean-Louis Baudry, using a psychoanalytical approach to ‘apparatus theory’, and writing in 1970, even suggests that the setup of the cinema, “the arrangement of the different elements – projector, darkened hall, screen…. reproduce in a striking way the mise-en-scène of Plato’s cave…” Baudry goes on to say that whilst in this ‘Plato’s cave’ that it the cinema, the similarities between it and the mirror-phase go beyond more than just simple analogy. The two main conditions required for the formation of the ‘I’ (or ego) emphasized by Lacan are a deficiency of the motor functions, and a comparative excess of visual skills. According to Baudry’s interpretation, these “conditions are repeated during cinematographic projection – suspension of mobility and predominance of the visual function…”

Christian Metz, another influential figure in the development of film theory, who had developed a semiotic approach to film, also turned to use psychoanalysis in his work. Using the Lacanian concept of the spectator in front of the cinema screen being equivalent to the infant in front of the mirror. However, Metz brings to light different aspects of the theory to Mulvey. Writing in 1975, he makes the significant point that there is one essential difference between the screen and mirror, that “there is one thing only that is never reflected in it (the screen); the spectators own body.” The question then, is with what is the spectator in the cinema identifying with, if not themselves? For Mulvey it is the actors on the screen, but Metz’s theory suggests that the spectator identifies with him/herself, taking part in an act of dual recognition. Firstly, that they (the spectators) are not on/in the screen and so therefore must be outside it, in a position of control, able to see and hear all, thus identifying themselves with the camera. Secondly that they are the very reason for the film’s existence, if they weren’t there to see it, it would be pointless. Hence Metz’s assertion that they partake in an “act of pure perception…as the condition of possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental subject.”

Mulvey then turns her attention to the narrative structure of the films shown under the conditions she has just analysed. She identifies a second form of scopophilia, one of a fetishistic nature. She theorises that it is used to escape from the ‘castration anxiety’ that is induced by the female form. The viewer can either focus their attention solely on some other object, (thus fetishising it), or by turning the female form into an object of fetishistic desire in itself. This, Mulvey notes, is the reason for the “cult of the female star” . However, there is a second route available in avoiding the threat of castration, and that is a ‘sadistic voyeurism’, in which guilt is laid on the female, and then the situation is rectified by either her forgiveness or punishment. Mulvey states that narrative structure of mainstream Hollywood cinema provides the perfect condition for this sadistic voyeurism to be exercised; “Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person… all occurring in a linear time, with a beginning and an end.” Whilst the male look is thus accounted for in the cinema, and given an active role, that of the female is not, and they are resigned to occupy a passive gaze. Either this, or they to adopt the look of male, and view the female characters, and thus themselves as objects, entering into a sadomasochistic gaze.

It is at this point in her essay that Mulvey illustrates her line of reasoning, by turning to the work of director Alfred Hitchcock, and in particular his films ‘Rear Window’ (1954), and ‘Vertigo’ (1958). She mentions and links her own work with an analysis made by French critic Jean Douchet, in an essay, “Hitch et son public” , in which he relates the film Rear Window to a commentary on cinema in general. The disabled Jeffries (played by James Stewart) spends his time immobilised in front of his window, spying on his neighbours hoping something interesting will happen. The parallel between he and the cinematic audience is clear; (and relates to the points that Baudry and Metz would go on to make, as we have already seen) both are involved in an act of looking, one at a screen, the other at a building with many ‘screens’, both with seemingly no power over the events that unfold. The photographer in the wheelchair corresponds to the man behind the movie camera – and to the man confined to a seat in the cinema. It is therefore a valid point, but one that other critic’s feel poses more problems than may at first be apparent. In fact, the very use of the word ‘rear’ in the title is suggestive of the main theme of the film, looking voyeuristically and being looked at unknowingly. Mulvey reads more into the film, feeling that it exemplifies the ‘symbolic order’, and the ideology of patriarchy.

The main male protagonist uses his dominant position to subjugate the female character Lisa (played by Grace Kelly) in two ways. Either sadistically to the ‘will’ (or patriarchal order), or to the ‘gaze’, voyeuristically. Due to Hitchcock’s use of specific camera techniques, the audience is forced to partake in the gaze of Jeff, and is therefore “absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene… which parodies his own in the cinema.” Throughout the film, Lisa is constantly trying to win Jeff’s affection, and despite her beauty (after all, it is Grace Kelly…) and seeming ‘perfectness’, he is reluctant to give in to her charms. However, this is only the case whilst she remains on the ‘spectators’ side of the ‘screen’. Once she crosses over onto the other side, that of the ‘viewed’ (the apartment block opposite Jeff’s apartment), he begins to regain interest in her, his passion for scopophilia is assuaged, and she become an object of his desire. Not only this, but he is given a chance to ‘rescue’ her or at least to view her as a ‘criminal’ and himself as being justified, a key process in overcoming castration anxiety, via sadistic voyeurism. As Mulvey puts it, in the film, “true perversion is barely concealed under a shallow mask of ideological correctness – the man is on the right side of the law, the woman on the wrong.”

However, after Lisa has broken the connection between her and Jeff and allowed the separation so vital for the voyeur to occur, and is being viewed by him, she makes eye contact with him from the ‘other side’, much to his agitation. He is no longer able to view her from the ‘rear’, but merely through a pane of glass. Another element of the film that Mulvey picks up on is Lisa’s role as a “passive image of visual perfection” emphasised by her interest in fashion, dress and style, and Jeff’s role as the voyeur, emphasised by the fact that he is a photojournalist. This certainly seems to confirm Mulvey’s theory, but the passivity of Lisa, and her (and subsequently the female’s in general) lack of a gaze is questionable.

A closer look at Rear Window shows that there is in fact a reversal of the typical active/male and passive/female roles. Lisa does not conform to the stereotypical, patriarchal order, rather she is the dominant force and it is Jeff who is ‘feminised’, even figuratively castrated, due to the large cast on his leg. Also, Lisa is a ‘working woman’, with self-dependence. Even when arranging a romantic meal for two she does not do the cooking herself, preferring to have her favourite restaurant “21” to deliver to her. This feminisation is complete when he becomes the victim of male (even domestic) violence, at the hands of ‘Thorwald’ – the man he has been spying on.

Tania Modleski, writing in 1988, seeks to further this point, and using Rear Window as her example, argues that Mulvey’s interpretation of the film, and of the role of Lisa does not take into account the facts of the film. Modleski argues that there is a gender/role reversal, and that Jeff and Lisa are in directly opposite positions to the couple that live opposite (Mr. & Mrs. Thorwald). In a book about Hitchcock by François Truffaut, the director himself is quoted as saying that there is an explicit reversal within the film; in the apartment opposite “it is the woman who is confined to her bed, whilst the husband comes and goes” , and the opposite is the case for Jeff and Lisa. This is not the only way in which Modleski feels that Lisa is portrayed as superior to Jeff, she argues that Lisa is “physically superior… both in her movements (and) in her dominance within the frame…”

Modleski also uses Lisa to account for the female ‘gaze’. Whereas Mulvey uses her as an example of a woman having no other role than that of “to-be-looked-at-ness” , Modleski argues that the female spectator at the cinema has her own, different “relationship to the spectacle and narrative.” Instead of objectifying the female screen character, the female spectator is able to identify and empathise with her. This is also highlighted in the film; whilst spying on another of their neighbours, ‘Miss Torso’, who is entertaining several young men, she steps out on to the balcony with one of them, and they kiss. Jeff remarks that she has picked “the most prosperous looking one”, but Lisa’s interpretation of the situation through identification, that she is does not love any of them, is later proved correct when her true love returns at the end of the film. She takes it further, suggesting that it is actually the male spectator (represented by Jeff) who must acknowledge his own passivity, because of the dominance of the female protagonist, “Jeff himself… is forced to identify with the woman…” Of course, this is just one filmic example, but at least Modleski tries to situate the female spectator in theoretical discourse.

In what could be taken as an essentialist argument, Mulvey appears to treat both spectatorship and maleness as homogenous essences – as if there is only one kind of spectator (male), and one kind of masculinity (heterosexual). As has been argued, it is possible that the female spectator does not simply have to adopt a masculine viewpoint, but rather is involved in a ‘double-identification’, with both the passive and the active subject positions. The same can equally be said for the male spectator, who does not necessarily wish to conform to the ideological order of patriarchy.

Mulvey does not appear to give any account of the female spectator, and Modleski’s argument does seem to highlight a weakness in Mulvey’s essay. However, to be fair to Mulvey, she spends very little of her essay dealing with the specific case of Rear Window, and seems more interested in making a point about cinema and the dominance of patriarchy in general. In her introduction she states, “it is said that analysing beauty or pleasure destroys it. That is the intention of this article.” Clearly she was intent on trying to bring about change to a world that was heavily dominated by the male order, but perhaps in this world of the present, whilst it is not altogether done away with, this ‘order’ is on the retreat.

‘Rear Window’ certainly poses a lot of questions regarding the gaze, and for a film that, according to Mulvey disavows the female spectator and her gaze, and is only concerned with male assertions of power via the ‘look’, it seems strange that the last look of the film, as Modleski points out, is given to the female character, Lisa, as was the very first.