Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

When we go to see a movie, we sit in a theater for a couple of hours and experience a story. But what part of that story made us excited? Why is it that we enjoy watching these movies, sitting down, completely clueless to whatever is going on outside of the theater? How is it that cinema can tune in to what it is that fascinates us so well? Is it because the stories are so riveting and eye capturing that we cannot help but stare in awe? Or is it the blatant sexual under and over tones that make us want to experience it? Sexuality in movies is almost always present. Very rarely will a movie come out that doesn't have a love interest aspect to it, and the ones that do come out are rarely successful.
The Mulvey essay dives into the pleasuring aspects of cinema using psychoanalysis to get a better understanding of how our pre-existing fascination that is imposed on us by a patriarchal society. The term she uses is phallocentric, the idea being that we see the penis as a dominant characteristic in our society. While this may be true, she also goes on to say that women embody the fears of men. She says that the absence of a penis symbolizes castration, and that is what forces women through society. This is a very loose and strange way of putting it. In my opinion, I feel that the penis IS the dominant feature in our society, or the idea of the penis, and while women are subjected by their lack of a penis, I don’t believe it weakens them, I believe it almost strengthens them. Women are not the power holders in this country, but they pull the strings.
I feel another aspect to the phallocentric society is males desire for women. Women may not have the cards, but they have the power. Sexual themes are constantly being used to sell products, movies, whatever! The first advertisements for America in the colonial times, referred to the new land as if it were a virgin woman, when it was really uncultivated, dangerous, and unexplored.
But some of this fascination is innate, or what she called scopophilia, which simply put IS fascination. A vouyeristic tendency of ours in which we take pleasure in watching the actions of others without fear of being seen. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. Babies learn through constantly watching and admiring other people’s actions, and trying to mimic them as their own.
I believe that our fascination with cinema stems from a desire to relate. When you see movies, you want to be involved, even in zombie movies, you admire the hero, and wish you could be put in a position to prove your bravery as they did. You want to be the hero who gets the girl, or the girl who finds herself, or the brave little toaster. We watch movies so we can find ourselves in the actions of people doing things that we never could.