Page 154 - Decoding Culture

G E N D ERED U B J E C TS, WOM E N ' S TEXTS 147
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its links to an allegedly 'empiricist' problematic. Mulvey's
approach, rather, encloses its topic within a theoretical system, seek­
ing illumination by absorbing it into a pre-given framework. This is
Theory' at work.
Leaving epistemological issues aside, the most remarked impli­
cation of her analysis is the predicative claim that the visual
pleasures of classical Hollywood cinema presuppose a subject who
takes pleasures that are essentially male. Once, that is, we have
identified the central constitutive features of visual pleasure in
Hollywood cinema, then the form itself is seen to interpellate a
male subject. It is this aspect of her argument that precipitated
much of the subsequent debate and, therefore, proved most influ­
ential in forming the terms in which 'spectatorship' came to
prominence in (feminist) cultural studies. Most critical discussion
(see, for example, the essays collected in Gamman and
Marshment, 1988, and in Screen, 1992) revolved around the role of
the female spectator. Where is she to place herself in relation to a
form offering only male pleasures? Are there other (gendered)
pleasures available? What of the male figure as an erotic object, or
the female protagonist in film narratives? Surely gendered specta­
tors can take up various subject positions in relation to Hollywood
film?
These, and other more sweeping questions about the very util­
ity of the psychoanalytic framework and its distinctive account of
'pleasure', ensured that a lively and sometimes fractious debate
followed the publication of Mulvey's essay. Her position was widely
disputed, variously adapted, and frequently misunderstood. Some
of the misunderstandings, it must be said, were born of an overly
literal reading of her claim about the 'masculine' character of the
spectator's look, and as time passed Mulvey herself sought to
restate her position in a more measured way. In 1981, in an
'Afterthought' that Gamman (1988: 191) not unfairly describes as

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