When the child, according to Freud, is confronted with the fact that a woman has no penis, the libido that
used to be focused on the female genitals becomes free. And if libido is not
attached to an object, one becomes anxious. The male child becomes afraid that he might lose his penis.
You might want to ask: why should we, as movie lovers, care? Well, according to Mulvey, the female character in a movie threatens to arouse the male spectator’s
castration-fear.
That is:
assume you are a man watching a movie (on the couch, with your popcorn, in the
dark). While watching, you see a woman on the screen and you think she is
beautiful and you like her and you like the plot in which she plays. All seems
well...
But then
(as always) something happens: the woman on the screen reminds you of
something, something that you fear. And even though you don’t know what she represents,
you do know that, whatever it is, it feels heavy on your soul. You start to feel
sick. Even the popcorn begins to taste a little strange.
What should
you do? Well, as a good old Freudian, I advise you to walk calmly to the
television and turn that thing off (right now!). Why? Well, if you don’t turn
off the movie, the origin of your fear might become conscious and we don’t want
you to become conscious of a fear you don’t want to be conscious of (or do
we?).
In other
words, we don’t want you to know that
the female character on your television-screen aroused your fear that your father might want to
castrate you (if this sounds a little strange, don’t worry: it's just your repression-system).
However, Mulvey shows (luckily for
Hollywood) that there are two methods for escaping our
fear for daddy and his knifes:
(1)
One
can try to demystify the original trauma
(2)
One
can substitute a fetish object
Long story short: in order to make a movie that is nice and
quiet for the male spectator, the female character must either be demystified;
or the libido of the male spectator must be channelled.
In the film BLUE VELVET, Dorothy is a female character and she is subjected to the will of mastery of the male gaze. Within the symbolic order, Dorothy merely possesses meaning and
fails to create any meaning herself.
In the plot of the movie, two male characters
play key roles. On the one hand, there is Jeffrey (the kind of guy that appears to be your ideal son-of-law) and
on the other hand there is Frank (an evil Sadistic non-Catholic pervert). Both Jeffrey and Frank are, within the plot, confronted with the
fact that Dorothy has no penis (at least, if you go along with a Freudian
reading of the movie). However, they deal with their castration-fears in
different ways:
(1)
Jeffrey
tries to demystify the mystery of Dorothy. Jeffrey wants to play the
detective.
(2)
Frank
simply denies the fact that Dorothy has no penis. Frank finds a
substitute (for the penis) in blue velvet (there you have it: the title explanation).
Frank tells Jeffrey that Jeffrey is just like him (not what
you want to hear from a crazy old psychopath). How come? Jeffrey and Frank both
reduce Dorothy to a symbolic sign, and as a sign Dorothy is subjected to their male-driven-desire-economy. Thus, Jeffrey and Frank, while dealing with their
castration-fears, both fail to recognize Dorothy’s dignity.
1) Frank's blue velvet fetish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=senNDipdmPo
2) Jeffrey is a pervert/detective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iWKnf3C8ZY
3) Frank tells Jeffry they are alike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5VU8GJcg24
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