“The Spectacle is Vulnerable”: on the iconoclastic origins of feminist art theory

This chapter challenges two prevalent assumptions about the oeuvre of Laura Mulvey: firstly, that her theoretical insights are predominantly shaped by her encounter with psychoanalysis; and, secondly, that her critique of the gender politics of the cinematic gaze stems from ‘scopophobia’ namely the subversion of visual representation to sabotage and frustrate viewing habits, expectations, and desires. I argue instead that although Freudian psychoanalysis had a significant influence on Mulvey’s worldview as her chosen antagonist, her key theoretical insights were borne out of her involvement in feminist collective action, and specifically WLM demonstrations at the Miss World contest at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1970. Furthermore, her approach to the cinematic gaze is not motivated by ‘scopophobia’, a term she never used but which was coined as the putative opposite of Freudian ‘scopophilia’, but by iconoclasm, namely a purposeful and activist – not theoretical – intervention in visual and material culture. The unravelling of these two assumptions shifts and expands the field of Mulvey’s contribution from film to public space, and from psychoanalysis to feminist activism. The chapter focuses on ‘The Spectacle is Vulnerable: Miss World, 1970’, the first essay in the collection Visual and Other Pleasures, where co-authors Mulvey and Margarita Jimenez foreground action over rhetoric and present activism as a form of knowledge-making. Their protest, semi-fictionalised in the film Misbehaviour (2020), is discussed alongside feminist street performances and interventions, including the ‘Flashing Nipple’ performances by Margaret Harrison and friends. I end with a reflection on the resonances and subversions of beauty contests in contemporary feminist art.

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