AFTERTHOUGHTS ONVISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CNEMA 10 On the other hand, she may not. She may find her identification with a hero provides. It is this female spectator that /wa. thar Most, enjoying the freedom of action and co AFTERTHOUGHTS ON"VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA"INSPIRED BY tting on films in which a woman central protagonist is shown to be unable to achieve a stable sexual identity, torn between the deep blue sea of KING VIDOR'S DUEL IN THE SUN(946) passive femininity and the devil of regressive masculinity. Laura Mulvey Gencrally it is dangerous to elide these tw ccepting masculinisation,while watching action difficulty of sexual difference in cinema that is missing in the undifferentiated ectator of"Visual Pleasure,. The unstable, oscillating difference is thrown into relief by Freuds theory of femininity FREUD AND FEMINInITY article was published in Screen, I have been asked why I only used the male third For Freud, femininity is complicated by the fact that it emerges out e of a crucial and in for the spectator. At the time, I was interest eriod of parallel development between the sexes; a period he or phallic, for both boys and girls. The terms he uses to conceive of femininity ar the sa certain problems of nguage and boundaries to expression. These problems refiect, very accurately of view which is als iety (suppressed, for instanc d male third and my own love of Hollywood melodram ntary opposite the male to the female, in that order. avenues of inquiry that should be followed up. Finally, Duel in the Sun and its be masculine is ego-syntonic at a certain of femininity ften has been at determines the female spectator is carried along, as it were by the scruffofthe text, or whether femininity. pleasure can be more deep-rooted and complex. Second(the'melodrama'isst w the text and its attendant ider I will on ry remains is always possible that the female spectator may find herself so out of key with the pleasure on offer, withits'masculinisation, that the spell of fascination is broken co-niod Regressions to the pre-Oedipus phase very frequently occur; in the f some womens lives there is a repeated alternation between periods in which femininity and masculinity gain the upper hand. 2 We libido Sexual life is Fron Framework 15-16-17(summer 1981)pp.12-1 dominated by the polarity of masculine-feminine; thus the notion sugges