ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Since the publication in 1975 of Laura Mulvey’s ground-breaking essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, much debate has centred on the validity and usefulness of psychoanalytically based film theory, particularly within feminism. Most of the debate concerns itself with the concept of the spectator as historically constructed (rather than solely gender-specifically subject to a given text) and the idea that any theories posited about a universal ‘male’ or ‘female’ spectator are necessarily reductive. Moreover, feminists have pointed out that there is no ‘female’ spectator in Mulvey’s essay, and have concentrated on ‘phallocentrism’ as a point of departure within feminist debate.
