In Mulvey's Proppean analysis of narrative structure it is the hero's marriage which effects narrative closure, phantasmically reiterating for the male spectator the resolution of the Oedipal struggle towards social integration. Mulvey pointed out that the Western's treatment of this structure opens out the disruptive possibility of a refusal of marriage at the culmination of the tale; personified by the hero riding lonesome into the
sunset. Mulvey argued that the resultant tension between the poles of integration and refusal eventually led to the splitting of the western hero, citing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as a prime example. This is one of the many westerns dealing with the transition from the lawless frontier or unfettered range to settled townships and social regulation in which the man who marries signifies this settlement and regulation. He is often actually a lawyer or sheriff. The hero who refuses marriage signifies the frontier or open range and resistance to the coming of the law.
The western narrative can thus be seen as a kind of national 'coming of age' tale, forging a national identity for America in the register of historical myth, whilst also registering a personal nostalgia for a juvenile phallic eroticism and freedom from social responsibility. These personal and interpersonal structures are thus metonymically related.
According to Mulvey, in Duel in the Sun, female identification with the protagonist, Pearl, is masculine in the sense that it is based in a regressive, gender-undifferentiated, phallic narcissism. Prior to the stage of Oedipal conflict, Freud did not differentiate between the libidinal drives of girls and boys. His identification of the libido with the masculine was, as Mulvey pointed out, merely conventional. For Freud, the libido is neither male nor female, but has a 'masculine' character insofar as the active principle is always culturally characterised as masculine. In women, a degree of active or masculine drive survives the massive repression which Freud argued was necessary to effect a feminine resolution of the Oedipal scenario. (this is all copy and paste)
The correct road, femininity, leads to an increasing repression of 'the active'. In this sense Hollywood genre films, structured around masculine pleasure, offering an identification with the active point of view, allow a female spectator to rediscover that lost aspect of her sexual identity, the never-fully-repressed bed-rock of feminine neurosis.
The western tomboy thus personifies the conflicts of a feminisation process which must 'repress' active drives; thus signifying a feminine nostalgia for the pre-Oedipal period of phallic activity. According to Mulvey, this is always an element of female pleasure in any cinematic representation organised by the gendered relay of the gaze. The female spectator's 'masculinised' position in the relay, emphasised by the 'masculinisation' of the female protagonist, engenders in the heterosexual female spectator a 'restless' tension between phallic nostalgia and socially correct feminine passivity.
sunset. Mulvey argued that the resultant tension between the poles of integration and refusal eventually led to the splitting of the western hero, citing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as a prime example. This is one of the many westerns dealing with the transition from the lawless frontier or unfettered range to settled townships and social regulation in which the man who marries signifies this settlement and regulation. He is often actually a lawyer or sheriff. The hero who refuses marriage signifies the frontier or open range and resistance to the coming of the law.The western narrative can thus be seen as a kind of national 'coming of age' tale, forging a national identity for America in the register of historical myth, whilst also registering a personal nostalgia for a juvenile phallic eroticism and freedom from social responsibility. These personal and interpersonal structures are thus metonymically related.
According to Mulvey, in Duel in the Sun, female identification with the protagonist, Pearl, is masculine in the sense that it is based in a regressive, gender-undifferentiated, phallic narcissism. Prior to the stage of Oedipal conflict, Freud did not differentiate between the libidinal drives of girls and boys. His identification of the libido with the masculine was, as Mulvey pointed out, merely conventional. For Freud, the libido is neither male nor female, but has a 'masculine' character insofar as the active principle is always culturally characterised as masculine. In women, a degree of active or masculine drive survives the massive repression which Freud argued was necessary to effect a feminine resolution of the Oedipal scenario. (this is all copy and paste)
The correct road, femininity, leads to an increasing repression of 'the active'. In this sense Hollywood genre films, structured around masculine pleasure, offering an identification with the active point of view, allow a female spectator to rediscover that lost aspect of her sexual identity, the never-fully-repressed bed-rock of feminine neurosis.
The western tomboy thus personifies the conflicts of a feminisation process which must 'repress' active drives; thus signifying a feminine nostalgia for the pre-Oedipal period of phallic activity. According to Mulvey, this is always an element of female pleasure in any cinematic representation organised by the gendered relay of the gaze. The female spectator's 'masculinised' position in the relay, emphasised by the 'masculinisation' of the female protagonist, engenders in the heterosexual female spectator a 'restless' tension between phallic nostalgia and socially correct feminine passivity.
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