Scopopholia and Cinema

In Lauren Mulvey's article, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," she discusses the role of women in film and how eroticized they have become. She discusses how film has made this possible because of the Scopophillic tendencies it produces. When watching a film, the viewer has an extremely voyeuristic perspective. This allows for viewers, especially men, to look at females in any way that they please. Muvley discusses how filmmakers have become aware of this, whether consciously or not. The result is woman being portrayed in such erotic ways that men are able to look at them with such voyeur. As Elaine says in the classic Seinfeld episode “The Movie,” “men can sit through the most pointless boring movie if there’s even the slightest possibility that a woman will take her top off.” An example of this in today’s culture could be Kill Bill. Though Tarantino is known for his crazy fetishes and it makes sense that he would over sexualize women in his movie, Kill Bill doesn’t do it extremely blatantly. It is much more subtle. The very first fight in Kill Bill is The Bride fighting Vernita Green. Though the fight isn’t very sexual at all, it is still two women having extremely close combat. They get very close to each other multiple times and if viewed out of context it can be viewed as sexual. I don’t know how relevant that is to the article but I think it has to do with what Mulvey is trying to say about films. The way in which they are viewed makes it so that women can be easily sexualized or eroticized in instances where they usually wouldn’t be.