LAURA MULVEY AFTERTHOUGHTS ON"VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA pp In as It use a es. Also, in the hero's traditional invulnerability, the Western ties in closely ck structure, also brings out the poignancy of this tension. The with Freud's remarks on day-dreaming. (As I am interested primarily in character function and narrative pattern, not in genre definition, many issues his narrative structure is based ables. The two paths cannot cross. On one side there is an encapsulation of urposes, the Western ides a crucial node forma power, and phallic attributes, in an individual who has to bow himself out of the at comment on the function of woman'(as opposed to'man')as a fier and sexual differen way of history; on the other, an individual impotence rewarded by political and ower, which, in the long fact becomes history. Here closure i function"marriage'is as crucial as it is in the folk-tale. It plays the same part in anction characterised by princess'or equivalent. This is the only function that cific, and thus essentially relates to the sex of the hero and his gral attribute of the upholder of the law. In this sense Hallies choice betwee arriageability. This function is very commonly repro the two men is predetermined. Hallie equals princess equals Oedipal resolution arded, equals repression of 1 of its opposite, not marriage. Thus, while the socia In a Western working within these conventions, the function 'marriage'sub- is an essential aspect of the fol ess and remaining alone(Randolph Scott in the Ranown series of movies nre. This neat narrative function restates the propensity forwoman'to mplex(integration into the symbolic), the rejection the erotic'already familiar from visual representation(as, for instance, argued in"Visual Pleasure"). Now I want to discuss the way in which shifts its meanings, producing another kind ts on the phallic phase in girls seemed to belong without a place in the chronology provides the opport phenomenon seem to belong to a phase of play and fantasy difficult te seemsto shift. The exactly into the Oedipal tra Landscape of action, although present, is not the dramatic core of the films story rather it is the interior drama of a girl caught between twoconflictingdesires esires, first of all, correspon male sexuality quoted above, that is: an oscillation betwee mething unknown in the Proppian tale. Here twe ality, still persists, but now rather than being animatic equation, woman= sexu ity and regressive 'ma society through marriage, the ge or a narrative function the of marriage and the family, the sphere represented by woman. a story such ressed. Woma as The Man Who Shot Liberty valance between the double hero also brin ake and eat it too. This particular tension gs out the underlying significance of the bout sexuality: it becomes a melodrama. It is as thou onal lens ha drama, its relation to the symbolic, with unusual clarity. A folk-tale story zoomed in and opened up the neat function'marriage'(and they lived happi .)to ask 'what next?"and to focus on t ings for her one moment of importance, to ask what does she want?*Here Liberty Valance seems to follow these lines at first. The narrative is generated by d the generic terrain for melodrama, in its woman-orientated strand. The act of villainy(Liber cond question(what does she owever the developmen split, as described a ke is no longer how the villain will s heroine's choice puts the seal of married grace on the upholder ofthelawDuel in story, whether the upholder Ranse)will be seen to be victorious or the personification of law i rimitive manifestation (Tom), closer to the good or the right. Liberty valance In Duel in the San the iconographical attributes of the two male (op characters, L ewt and Jesse, conform very closely to those of Tom and R 27