Impressions of Laura Muvley's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' 1975

My initial impression of Laura Muvley's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' was that the concepts often appear outdated. Although women are often represented as essentially a reward which men may work for, they tend to take a more active role than Muvley implies. For example she talks about women as being motivators for the male protagonist, but essentially useless, whereas in film currently women often take an active role rather than just being the reason for men to act. Furthermore, in my opinion the Freudian psychoanalytical concepts she advocates are questionable as they are too heavily subjective, as Freud had little evidence to back up his research and coined concepts such as the super-ego with no scientific support. 

The idea that men have power over women through observation in films is interesting but its applicability today is questionable as this essay refers to films in which women were idolized for their beauty which although still occurs, is less apparent today. Whilst it still exists, women are not so solely judged on their appearance, they are usually chosen for beauty, but are given less one dimensional characters who are more independent. However I do agree with her view that often in films women are pursued for sexual aspects which then are removed when they are obtained by the man. This implies that once women are obtained by a man they change, losing the aspects which attracted the man initially. Therefore this takes away the woman's power in the way that they are viewed on film as usually the man takes the dominant role.