ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses life history of Laura Mulvey, a feminist thinker. Laura Mulvey is undoubtedly the most cited feminist film theorist, possibly the most cited scholar in any area of film studies. The influence of her 1975 polemic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (VPNC) can hardly be overstated not only in film studies itself but across art history, cultural studies, and critical theory. In the 1970s she was a feminist activist and filmmaker, writing for politically-oriented magazines such as Spare Rib, and her early work was produced outside the academy. Mulvey uses psychoanalysis as the central method for feminist analysis of cinema. In Fetishism and Curiosity, Mulvey argues that cinema provides a place where Freudian and Marxist fetishisms merge, with commodity culture intertwining with sexualized disavowals. In "Close Ups and Commodities" she explores the affective power of the close up shot, and in particular the way that images of glamorous female stars create eroticized stasis.
