Passive Viewing vs. Critical Audiences

When I first read Mulvey's article discussing the role of the woman in classic cinema as an object to be gazed upon and the role of the man as a narcissistic and relatable image, I was rather outraged by the entire concept. I felt the article as a whole was sexist and painted an incomplete picture of cinema, overlooking its specific relevance to vintage Hollywood in an attempt to keep my ideal worldview intact. If there was any such blatant sexism embodied in movies, I thought, it certainly wasn't the fault of the audience - it was merely the error of the director.

In Monday's lecture, when we discussed the psychoanalytic background of the article and related it to Freud and Lacan's theories, my view of it was transformed; after we watched Rear Window and King Kong that night, my opinion was radically shifted to one entirely in agreement with Mulvey. There was just one remaining idea that I refused to let go of, however, and that was the notion that the blame lay entirely with the director, not with the passive audience. After all, Mulvey seems indifferent as to who perpetuates the scopophilia and ego libido that embodies itself within the frame of sexism within classic cinema; she simply identifies it and deconstructs it.

It took Snead's analysis of King Kong, then, to fully bring me over to the other side. Certainly, the makers of King Kong were far from blameless. The movie (and Mr. Denham himself, one of our relatable images) actively perpetuates racist and sexist stereotypes that almost certainly worked against social progress. The question, however, is how much of that was the fault of the director and how much of that was the error of the viewer. Snead holds nothing back when he blames the audience for accepting King Kong even more than those who created it, saying that the film "reveals one's society to itself," explaining that "King Kong dies for everyone's sins," and ultimately concluding that "the general guilt inheres in the general gaze" (27).

What Snead is saying can be tied back to the Benjamin reading about the establishment of film as an art form. As a consequence of the reproducibility of art, he argued, audiences could actively critique films instead of being passive viewers. Benjamin used this argument in a political sense and tied it to the downfall of fascism, but here it can be applied to Snead's argument. When we as an audience watch King Kong, our natural response is to let our base desire for spectacle overtake our ability to think for ourselves as a critical audience. Instead of processing and thinking for ourselves, we instead regress to the stage of passive viewing. We let the reprehensible undertones of such a movie take us over subconsciously and find ourselves in Denham. It's certainly depressing, but I find it to be a particularly fascinating warning of the perils of passivity.