Reassemblage: Challenging the Relationship between Women and Visual Ple

Reassemblage Challenging the Relationship between Women and Visual Pleasure Visual pleasure, derived from images on film, is dominated by sexual imbalance. The pleasure in looking is give away between active/ priapic and passive/female. In her essayVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Laura Mulvey asserts the fact that in mainstream films, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. That is to say, the woman is both an object of desire and a spectacle for the male voyeuristic gaze. The males function is active he advances the story and controls the gaze onto the women. Interestingly, the spectator identifies with the male by dint of camera technique and style. In an effort to reproduce the so-called natural conditions of human perception, male point-of-view shots are often used along with deep focus. In addition, camera movements are usually determined by the actions of the male protagonist. Consequently, the gaze is dominated by the active male while the passive female e xists to halt desire within the film. In an attempt to change this structure, Mulvey stresses the importance of challenging the look. One way this is accomplished, is in the film Reassemblage, where the look of the camera is free from male perspective and dominated more by passionate detachment. In doing this, the filmmaker, Trinh Minh-Ha attempts to destroy the satisfaction and pleasure derived from images of women in film, by highlighting the ways Hollywood depends on voyeuristic and fetishi...