Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" critiques representations of gender in the cinema with a pointed use of psychoanalysis. Her main argument is that the cinema offers scopophilic pleasure which is ultimately narcissistic. On the one hand the spectator gains a (sexual) pleasure from the images seen, on the other hand he identifies with certain images. These two modes of looking is divided along gender lines. The (male) protagonist structures film. What the camera shows or does not show us is always in significant relation to that which the protagonist sees or does not see. He has a life of his own, so to speak, and the spectator is invited to identify with him. The gaze of the spectator is therefore gendered male because of this
identification. The woman is figured as an object of the gaze and does not direct the spectator's perception in the authoritative way in which the male protagonist does. As an object she gives scopophilic pleasure, but as an autonomous person, her very presence in the image causes a castration anxiety in the spectator due to her lack of penis. This is the case because the cinematic experience closely simulates the Lacanian psychosexual stage of the Imaginary win which the subjectivity of the spectator's ego is developed and regulated by the play of scopophilic pleasure and identification with the figures represented on the screen. Thus, in order to counter the castration threat the woman poses, cinema employs a range of techniques to deny the woman a gaze and subvert her autonomy and identity as a character in the story.
In his book, The Double Screen, Wu Hung describes the "Twelve Beauties" screens owned by Prince Yongzheng in the 18th century with a perspective very much like Mulvey's. As in the image to the right, the women are situate in their own, private
spaces, and "the illusory space behind each woman entices the viewer to peep through layers of gates and windows into her private domain" (Wu, 219). In the painting at the right, the hand seems to gesture upwards, toward the face, inviting the viewer to deny any subjective power the woman's gaze might suggest, and instead consider her an object intended to give scopophilic pleasure. The calligraphy in the background, written by Yangzheng himself, positions the prince in the role of primary viewer (the paintings were commissioned by the prince, for the prince) as well as a co creator of the image. The calligraphy acts as a stand in for the prince and his presence in the woman's private quarters conveys a sense of his ownership over the space and the figure as well.
Wu does not use the words "castration anxiety" in any of its forms, and does not even say that the women represented had the capacity for threatening the viewer in any significant sense. Yet, his arguments are all centered towards the ways in which the autonomy of female's image was denied, how the figures were carefully crafted to have a certain seductive power, and yet remain wholly objectified. Part of the difference in approach between Mulvey and Wu may just be the difference between western cinema and Chinese painting. The former has a sense of verisimilitude written into its very practice, while in the latter, realist representation was sideline to other concerns. What these paintings show, for Wu, is the way in which Yangzheng displayed his mastery over the other which, for the Manchu rulers, constituted the entirety of subjects over which they ruled. Such mastery "fulfilled not only a private fantasy [for Yangzheng] but also a desire to exercise power over a defeated culture and nation" (Wu, 221).
