Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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This video provides a closer look at the psychoanalytic underpinning's of Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," a major work in film studies best known for the concept of the "male gaze." The video looks closely at the second paragraph of the essay, which summarizes a number of major principles from the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. In particular, the video examines how Lacan specifically informs Mulvey's arguments.

Topics discussed include castration anxiety; the phallus (especially the distinction between Freud's definition and Lacan's definition); the imaginary, symbolic, and real (Lacan); and the function of the term "signifier" in Mulvey and Lacan.

For the full series on Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and the male gaze, see below:

Part 1: youtu.be/3CDhsL-OzaQ

Part 2: youtu.be/YgP2pyuCtC0

Part 3: youtu.be/yMX06goQlZY

Part 4: youtu.be/mkHAGJIoKHI

Part 5: youtu.be/vioVPN1BGl0